


The Lives We Live (and the Ones We Lost)

by Redsgae, Snuf



Category: The Resident (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Whump, Everyone is just really sad, Hits right in the feels, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Powered AU, Sad., Whump, a little fluff, like l o t s of angst, like literally so much whump, literally a whole novel, lots of gay, psychical whump, we just vibin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24791284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redsgae/pseuds/Redsgae, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snuf/pseuds/Snuf
Summary: AU WHERE ALL THE CHARACTERS HAVE ABILITIESConrad had already been having a long day, the last thing he needed was to set the hospital ablaze. He wasn’t sure exactly what the stone was but he knew that it was nothing but bad, after it broke, all of them developed strange, cursed, abilities. As luck would have it Cain came out the strongest and he has no intention of using his power for good. If they can’t stop him, Barrett Cain will become the most powerful man the world has ever seen. Question is, are they already to late?
Relationships: Conrad Hawkins/Jude Silva, Conrad Hawkins/Nicolette Nevin, Irving Feldman/Jessica Moore, Randolph Bell/AJ Austin, Randolph Bell/Kit Voss
Kudos: 7





	1. Flames and Fury

**Author's Note:**

> So just a little disclaimer here for y’all. We are literally just writing this for the fun of it, it’s not beta read, it’s not following any strict plot structure, we are literally just two crackheads that are having the time of our lives with this and making it up as we go. Also I’m sure you noticed it’s pretty long, y’all should get used to that. You have been warned, enjoy! :)
> 
> ~Red and Snuf

The morning was a rather miserable one, pelting rain down on Conrad as he went on his morning jog. Usually on a day like this he would skip the jog, but he had a lot on his mind today. He and Nic had gotten into a fight the previous night and he was jogging to ease his mind, he was soaking wet but he was distracted. 

He had been jogging for quite some time, his shift started in just under an hour so he course corrected and turned in the direction of Chastain. Thankfully, Nic would not be in until later in the shift so he could have a little time without her giving him _the look._ God, he hated that look, the “I can't believe you did this _again,”_ look. Nic’s look was very distinct, crushing. 

Thinking about Nic for just a second while jogging was enough to distract him, he lost focus and ran into someone standing at a bus stop on his jogging path, he knocked the man to the ground and all the stuff he had been carrying scattered over the wet concrete. 

A panicked look crossed the man's face as he scrambled to pick up the things that had fallen from his briefcase, counting and cussing under his breath as he threw what appeared to be deep blue collectible rocks into his briefcase. “One short,” he muttered after collecting all the rocks from the sidewalk. He looked up at Conrad, who had not moved from his spot on the ground where he had fallen, looking quite dazed. “Shit,” the man cussed under his breath before getting up and running in the opposite direction as fast as he could.

Conrad set his head down on the soaked pavement for a second, only further soaking him, but he didn’t seem to care. He felt a wave of sudden nausea wash over him, his vision blurred for only a second, he tried to get up but immediately fell back to the ground. He couldn’t explain it but he suddenly felt… different. In a way that he couldn’t put words too, but he knew that something had changed, he just didn’t know what. 

When he managed to get to his feet he felt an unexplainable stinging on his skin, it burnt, it felt like a terrible sunburn had engulfed his whole body all of the sudden. He felt a small gasp escape his mouth, biting his lip and looking down at the ground, that's when he saw it, one of the man's rocks left on the ground. Conrad bent down, the motion making his whole body sting and him to quietly call out in pain, he picked up the rock and shoved it in his pocket before running inside. He felt like his whole body was on fire. When he was inside he pulled his phone and called a cab, he didn’t want to call Nic after their fight, and Jude was already at work. After the cab was called he pulled the strange rock out of his pocket, it seemed to almost glow in his palm. 

“What the hell are you?” He murmured to himself, earning him a few strange looks from people around. The more hw dried off the less his body stung, he turned the rock over in his hand, observing it until his cab arrived. He shoved the rock back in his pocket and went out to the cab, as soon as the rain hit his skin again it burned like hell but that wasn’t what he was focused on, he was going to be late. 

\----------------------------------------

“Late. Late yet again, Hawkins. What was it this time?”

“Will you let me be, Bell? It’s been a long morning.” Conrad scoffed, getting out of the cab.

“No I won’t let you be,” Bell said, stepping in front of him, cutting him off. “There’s patients here that need you. You can’t just show up late and not expect to be talked to.”

Conrad rolled his eyes, huffing under his breath. “There's patients here that need you too, Bell. And standing around pestering me for being late isn’t helping them either,” he scoffed, moving past Bell and pushing him out of the way, his hand was surprisingly warm to the touch.

The warmth of his hand caught Bell off guard and he was unable to form a snarky remark. All he said was: “Get to work, Hawkins. If you’re late again I’ll… Hell I don’t even know what I’m going to do. You don’t listen anyway.” Bell shook his head and walked away to grab himself a coffee before his next surgery.

“It’s taken you this long to figure that out,” Conrad said sarcastically, moving around the people in the ED and moving towards the locker rooms to take a shower and change into his scrubs for his shift.

\----------------------------------------

Bell pushed open the doors of the OR, smiling under his surgical mask as he saw AJ standing across from him. “Doctor Austin,” Bell said, walking over to the sleeping patient, keeping eyes on AJ.

AJ looked up at Bell, a slight chuckle escaping under his mask. “About time you joined us, Doctor Bell,” he quipped in his deep baritone voice, flipping the scalpel in his hand and holding it out to Bell. “Care to do the honors?” He asked, a trickle of sarcasm lingering though his voice, Bell could practically hear the smile plastered on AJ's face behind his mask.

“Would love to, Doctor Austin,” He said, grabbing the scalpel out of AJ’s hand, their fingers brushing as he grabbed it. He then began to make the first cut into the sleeping patient. After Bell made the clean cut he retracted the skin and began the operation.

AJ watched Bell make the cut and retract the skin intently, almost as if he was actually interested, it was a look that didn’t cross his face often, it made a slight smile cross Jessica’s face as AJ called for the cautery, holding his hand out and once again redirecting his gaze up to Bell when she placed it in has hand. “Let’s do this, dawg,” AJ said, his voice less demanding and smug than when he was normally in the OR with Mina.

“Let’s do it, dawg,” Bell said back, looking up to meet AJ’s eyes before he continued. This made Jessica smile even bigger. Bell would never talk like this to anyone, but apparently AJ was an exception.

AJ offered only a slight reaffirming nod in response, smiling under his mask at Bell, but clearly not wanting him to see it, clear to Jessica anyway. AJ was secretly hoping Bell was too caught up in the operation to notice as he took a half step closer to the operation table, leaning closer to Bell, pretending to get a closer look at the freshly made cut, when really he was just using it as an excuse to get a little closer. “Missed a spot,” AJ teased, motioning to a small abscess Bell had not yet removed from the patient's intestines.

Bell looked at the spot, then at AJ to see him much closer to the operating table than he was before. He began to zone out as he looked into AJ’s brown eyes, drowning in them. He never knew that AJ had such pretty eyes.

AJ looked up at Bell, still leaned in over the operating table, for just a second he stopped. For a second his mind ran blank, his thoughts all dried up, staring into the older man's turquoise eyes. For just a second he forgot what he was even doing, holding the cautery in one hand, the other dangling by his side.There was something about the way Bell looked down at him, the way the shorter man towered over him as he leaned in over the patient, something that just made him stop and think for a second, think about how lucky he was. How lucky he was to have this job, to be able to operate in the OR with men as grand as Randolph Bell.

“Doctor Bell? Doctor Austin?” Jessica said, breaking the silence, looking at both of them with a smile on her face. “Everything okay?”

Bell looked up at Jessica, breaking the stare from AJ. “Sorry. Just got a little caught up in my own thoughts. Where were we?” Bell reverted his attention down to the patient, leaving AJ’s eyes for another time.

As soon as Jessica spoke, AJ jolted up to a standing position, nearly headbutting Bell on his way up. “Yes, yes,” he said quickly, a new lingering sense of urgency in his voice, something that almost never intertwined with the man's calm, tranquil, baritone voice. “Everything is perfect, dawg,” He said softly, his eyes almost naturally drifting back to Bell’s. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Bell wanted to look at AJ so bad, but he knew if he did he would get lost in them for the rest of the surgery and the patient would die on the table. It made him turn red, just thinking about AJ’s eyes, trying to paint a picture in his mind of what they looked like. The picture he painted in his head didn’t look half as pretty as AJ’s actual eyes, which disappointed him a little. He just wanted to end this surgery and spend the rest of the scheduled time just looking into those wonderful eyes. He felt himself heating up in the cheeks at the thought of looking at AJ, hoping that his surgical mask could hide his incredibly red cheeks.

AJ was a little disappointed that Bell did not return his gaze, shifting it back down to the patient but finding it only made its way back up to meet the eyes of the fine surgeon that stood across from him. AJ would never really admit it but he really did think that Randolph Bell was as fine a surgeon as they come. He’d heard the rumors of the dreaded HODAD, the doctor who had patients die during routine procedures, but as long as the two of them had been working together Bell’s work had been nothing short of perfection. Randolph Bell was the reason Chastian had made AJ’s list, the reason he wanted to work there before he had even laid eyes on the place. AJ was far to arrogant to believe that he had much to learn from anybody, certainly not any of the sup-par doctors at Chastain, but if there was one person he could certainly stand to learn a thing or two from, it would certainly be the the man standing on the opposite side of the operating table. 

AJ stared at Bell for a moment, trying to fight back the smile that crept onto his face, watching as Bell eagerly cut abscesses from the patient’s intestines, finding himself doing a double-take when he noticed the thin layer of blush creeping up above Bell’s mask. He wanted nothing more than to quip some snarky remark, teasing Bell for the layer of red covering his face, but not saying a word. He just watched Bell work, holding the cautery at the ready, just in case.

Bell worked through the heat in his cheeks and as time went by the heat and redness subsided. His mind went from AJ to surgery as it got later and later in the day. Before Bell knew it, he and AJ were stitching up the patient together. As they were stitching them up, their fingers brushed multiple times, each time getting a little bit of redness out of Bell’s cheeks. By the time they were done, Bell's cheeks were just as red if not redder than the time he was thinking of AJ’s eyes, but only this time there was no hiding them behind a mask. They were done with the surgery and exiting the OR, emptying their bloody gloves and gowns into the disposal bins. Bell didn’t want to remove the mask, the only thing hiding his red cheeks, but he didn’t really have a choice. He removed his surgical cap, then removed his mask, making sure his back was to AJ as he disposed of the mask. He stood in silence, his cheeks still bright red and thoughts running at two hundred miles an hour. He didn’t know if he should turn around and face the pretty eyed man, or just stand here paralyzed until AJ left.

AJ moved towards Bell, throwing his mask, gloves, and gown into the disposal as well, his eyes flickering up to meet Bell’s. He stopped for a second when he saw the blush, a giddy and smug smile crossing his face, no longer concealed by his mask either. AJ seemed quite enthused by the older man’s embarrassment, an ever so soft chuckle escaped his lips as he leaned in closer to Bell to get a closer look. A hundred, sly, smug, teasing comments ran through his head: _“What’s wrong, Doctor Bell? Is it hot in here or is it just me,”_ he thought, widening his smug smile. _“I think you got a little something on your face, Doctor Bell,”_ but when he opened his mouth to speak, none of those things came out. Instead, almost instinctively, he said something much kinder, softer. “We did good today, dawg,” he said, his smooth baritone voice, not fluctuating for even a second. He pat Bell gently on the shoulder and left the OR without another word, making his way down the hall to the next surgery he had with Mina. 

Bell turned and watched him leave the OR, a feeling of shock and relief replacing the embarrassment. He saw AJ out of the corner of his eye, smiling, and he knew that AJ had a million things running through his mind on what he should say about his blush, but the thing that came out was kind and sincere. He smiled to himself and let himself blush even more, knowing that he had the time to let the redness calm down before he went anywhere else.

\----------------------------------------

Back in the ER Conrad’s day had quite frankly gone from bad to worse, ever since his jog that morning he had felt awful. He figured he had just caught something, he had been jogging in the rain after all. The strangely glowing rock from that morning had slipped his mind, even though it was still jumbling around in his pocket.

He was sweating, like a lot, he had never been this hot at work before, in fact, he was usually cold which was why he usually wore his undershirt but he was sweating buckets, today it must have been hot. He could hardly touch patients without them pulling away an cussing at him for “burning them”. He had no idea what was happening to him but he was much too stubborn to go home because of it, that was something he would surely regret. 

As he was walking down the hallway back towards the ER, he saw Jude turn the corner and swiftly turned into the nearest empty room.

Despite the attempt,Jude saw him, responding with a playful eye roll and following him into the room. “Word travels quick you know?” He said, holding one of two coffees in his hand out to Conrad.

Conrad silently cussed under his breath, grabbing the cup from Jude, careful not to brush hands with him. “Yeah I heard, Bell and AJ pulled off that hernia surgery with no complications,” he deflected, knowing exactly what Jude was here for, he had been sick all morning and someone was bound to notice, he was sweating like a pig. He met Jude’s eyes for a second before shifting his gaze down to his coffee cup and taking a sip, immediately spitting it back into the cup, praying that Jude didn’t see it. The coffee was practically boiling in his hand, they never served coffee at any temperature other than lukewarm. What the hell was happening to him?

“Look, Conrad, go home. You look sick as hell, you’re burning up too. How are you supposed to help people if you are sick like this? You can’t even keep that coffee down, yes I saw you spit it out, don’t try to be sneaky,” Jude kept his eyes on Conrad, concern written on his face as he watched sweat beads form on his forehead. “Please, for the sake of your patients, because I know you won’t do it for the sake of yourself, go home.”

Conrad rolled his eyes, he knew Jude was right, but that most certainly did not mean he was going to listen to him. “I’m not sick, it is hot as hell in here so maybe I’m a little sweaty but I’m fine. I’ll live.” He scoffed, sarcasm lingering in his voice. He could tell that Jude was concerned, and if Jude’s concern was showing then he must have really looked awful but he was not going to go home, especially now that Jude was telling him too. “I’m not trying to be sneaky,” he continued. “I can keep the coffee down, I can’t drink it because it’s hot.” He set the coffee on the counter that lined the front wall of the room. “I appreciate you coming all the way down here but I’m sure you have patients to operate on, and I have patients to diagnose. I will not leave “for the sake of my patients” I will stay for their sake.” 

“If you’re staying for the sake of them, then I’m staying for the sake of you.” Jude set his coffee down next to Conrad’s, then looked him in the eyes. “Conrad, I understand that you are an extremely stubborn man, but you are seriously sick. That coffee was no warmer than all the other times you’ve drank it. It’s only 65 degrees in here, so you shouldn’t be sweating this much. I know you won’t listen to me, and I don’t expect you to, but please just let me check you out at least so I know that nothings seriously wrong with you. If there’s nothing really wrong, then I’ll let you go about your job and I’ll leave you alone. Do we have a deal?”

Conrad thought about it for a second, dodging Jude for the next few minutes seemed a lot easier than dodging him for the rest of the day. He could tell that something was seriously wrong with him, it was easy enough to tell but he was hoping if he gave Jude the satisfaction of letting him check him out then Jude would at least leave him alone for the rest of the day. “Fine,” Conrad grumbled to himself, reluctantly. “But no matter what you say I _am_ going back to work when you are done.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, crossing his arms with a slight huff, a little bit of embarrassment shining through the reluctance that was painted across his face.

Jude then began to examine Conrad. He placed his hand on Conrad’s forehead, only to draw back suddenly and wince in pain and swing his hand vigorously through the air. “God! You’re hot to the touch! I’ve never felt this much heat radiating off of anyone before, no wonder you’re sweating!” Jude left Conrad's side and moved to the sink to wet some paper towels with cold water. He then quickly walked over and put the paper towels on Conrad’s head. “Here, hopefully this will help you cool off.”

“If you think I’m hot, Jude, you can just say so,” Conrad quipped, smugly with a fragment of a smirk crossing his face as Jude crossed the room to the sink. By the time he realized what Jude was doing it was already too late. 

“Jude, wait!” He called just before Jude touched the wet paper towels to his forehead. He figured the water would sting, like the rain had that morning, he had hardly even been able to take a shower before starting work, but this was much worse. When the ice cold water on the paper towel hit his forehead he cried out in pain, immediately reaching up and grabbing Jude’s wrist. That’s when it all started, the downfall of them all.

As Conrad lifted his arm his whole left arm, up to his shoulder, ignited in flames. Before Conrad even had a chance to notice, his hand was already around Jude’s wrist. The fire made its way down his arm, burning the skin on Jude’s wrist, causing him to scream in both pain and surprise. 

He backed up in surprise, unhinging himself from Conrad's grasp, gasping in pain and speechless at what he just saw. He looked at the fire bursting from Conrad's arm and lighting everything on fire within the vicinity. His pain was covered up with adrenaline as soon as he saw the flames growing bigger and spreading quickly. “Conrad! We have to get out of here and call the fire department!” Jude screamed while staring at the growing flames.

Conrad just stared down at his own burning body in shock, it hurt like hell, it felt like his flesh was burning but he knew that it wasn’t. He was on fire. He _was_ fire. It wasn’t until he looked back up at Jude that he saw the taller man’s burnt wrist, looking around he started to realize the destruction he was causing. He shook his arm, trying to put the fire out, the adrenaline was the only thing keeping him from feeling the agonizing pain of his entire body feeling like it was burning to a crisp. Jude took a step closer to him, saying something. Conrad didn’t hear it, he didn’t care. 

“Get away from me!” He screamed, “I don’t want to hurt you!” He shoved Jude as hard as he could away from him, in the process he fell off of the bed. His back hit the ground first, he felt the stone shatter in his pocket. He opened his mouth to warn Jude to run like hell, he was certain now that it was the stone that did this to him but before he had a chance to say anything his head hit the ground. The impact was hard enough to knock him out.

As soon as his head hit the ground the fire that had covered his body instantly went out, but it had spread to the bed sheets, the curtains, it was spreading up the walls. The fire alarms started to go off, the sprinklers activated, in the chaos Jude didn’t stand a chance at noticing the strangely blue smoke that mixed with the rest, moving towards the vent.

Jude stared at Conrad, mind running at 200 miles an hour trying to think of what to do. If he went to get Conrad there was a chance of him burning to death just by touching Conrad. If he left him he could potentially die with these sprinklers going off, and he assumes that water hurts him, based on what happened to him when Jude applied the wet towels to his head. Jude trusted his gut and ran to Conrad, grabbing him under his arms and dragging him to safety, trying his best to get him out quickly. Pain seared into his hands and wrists as they made contact with Conrad, and even through the scrubs it burned. He screamed in pain as he pulled him away from the flames and sprinklers and under a desk where the water couldn't reach them. He released Conrad and bit his bottom lip as he repressed a scream. He held up his hands to find them burned, stinging and worsening with each coming second. He leaned back against the desk wall and took deep breaths to try to ease the pain. He looked at Conrad who laid next to him, his scrubs burned from his arm fire explosion, but other than that he seemed fine. He checked Conrad’s head for bleeding but, thankfully, found no blood. He sighed in relief and tried to put his mind off of the burning in his hands and arms until the sprinklers would shut off.

It didn’t make any sense, Conrad’s body had just been on fire, yet, there was not a single burn on his skin. Most of the left side of his shirt was reduced to ash but his skin was perfectly unblemished. Not that Jude was paying much attention to that to begin with, his skin was quite the opposite, blister, blooded, and covered with burns but he was just happy that the two of them were safe. Or at least that Conrad was, it seemed that fire couldn’t hurt him but it could hurt Jude, which meant if it kept spreading he would die, sitting right there, next to his best friend under this god forsaken desk. 

—Ten Minutes Earlier—

AJ, Mina, and Nolan were in the ER. The surgery was pretty basic, Nolan really had no reason to be there. AJ had tried insulting him, pestering him, the usual stuff, to get him to leave but Nolan stayed anyway. He was only observing and as long as he didn’t speak AJ was willing to put up with him. It was almost annoying to him to have to work with Mina and Nolan after an entire day or working with Bell. He respected Mina but not to the same degree as he did Bell and he most certainly did not respect Nolan.

“We’re almost done here, dawg,” AJ said, his smooth baritone voice lined with roughness. “You can go.” 

“Nope. I’m staying right here, _dawg,_ ” Nolan sneered, crossing his arms and adding an eye roll in too. “Just give up trying to get rid of me. My therapist told me to listen to your inner voice, and my inner voice is telling me to stick around.”

Mina rolled her eyes and glanced at AJ, her facial expressions saying all she needed to say. _I hate him, and I want him to leave._

AJ rolled his eyes, returning Minas look with a slight nod. “Well, Dr. Nolan. I think if you have an “inner voice” that is telling you to do anything then the last thing you should be worried about is staying in this surgery,” AJ scoffed. “You’re a trauma surgeon, dawg. This is a cardiac surgery, meant for a cardiac surgeon, which, as previously specified, you are not. So get lost.” He said the whole thing scarcely looking up at Nolan, keeping his focus on the surgery at hand. It was almost hard to believe that just earlier that day he had been doing surgery with _thee_ Randolph Bell, and now he had to put up with this. 

Nolan rolled his eyes, but stayed put.

Mina shook her head at the trauma surgeon in disgust at his will to stick around. Ignoring him, she turned around, back to the surgery with AJ, trying to clear her head of the unwanted presence behind her.

AJ seemed nothing but annoyed that he was there, in fact, he seemed more annoyed than usual. There was nothing like an entire day of working with Bell to remind him how much he hated working with anyone else but the good news was that they were almost done. He finished sewing in the stent and looked up at Mina, then back at Nolan, rolling his eyes again. “Let’s just finish this already,” he grumbled. 

As they were putting in the last stent, the fire alarm began to blare out, making Nolan jump and scream in surprise. The surgeons looked at him very judgmentally, resulting in Nolan lashing out. “Are you people serious?! There’s a fucking fire and you aren’t freaked out! We have to get the hell out of here! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit! Calm down Albert, your therapist told you that screaming isn’t good for you! Think of happy things!” As Nolan named the various things that made him happy, he began to hyperventilate and lose his balance. He half fell half walked to a chair and took a seat, still naming the happy things in his life.

“If you would have left this wouldn’t be happening right now. Maybe your inner voice was wrong,” AJ said sarcastically, rolling his eyes as he watched Nolan stumble to the chair. He seemed completely unphased by the fire alarms, when the sprinklers in the OR got triggered he started to stitch up the patient, grumbling about the things he would do if Nolan didn’t shut up. The whole OR smelt like smoke but AJ remained calm. He was his usual calm, smug, self, right up until the second he wasn’t. 

AJ was stitching up the patient when he suddenly stopped, he felt different, the room felt like it was heating up which was certainly reasonable considering the building was on fire, but it was more than that his body felt like it was heating up from the inside out. “Do you feel that?” He said, looking up at Mina, suddenly his nose was pouring blood but he didn’t even seem to notice. The blood ran down his face and accumulated in a small puddle at the bottom of his surgical mask but went no further, dyeing the bottom of his surgical mask, where it met the net that covered his beard, deep red. As the blood accumulated more it began to seep through the mask it tricked slowly down the front of his mask and beard cover but never fell. Not a drop touched the patient, not a drop touched anything, it just trickled down the mask, beard cover, and just kind of floated there under his covered beard as if the laws of gravity did not apply to it at all. AJ seemed not to notice any of it but he was clearly growing more and more uncomfortable with each passing second. 

Okafor looked at him, concern etched on her face. “AJ, you’re bleeding-” Her words were caught in her throat as the blood floated, but never fell. “AJ. There- there’s something wrong with your b-blood,” she said, voice shakier than she expected.

AJ seemed confused, he had scarcely heard Mina’s voice so shaky. The comment caught Nolan’s attention, looking up from his chair in the corner a terrified look crossed his face.

AJ looked back at Nolan, then at Mina, then touched one of his gloved hands to his mask. “So what, I’m bleeding? So is he, he motioned to the patient on the table, clearly not seeing what they were so freaked out about but his breathing was speeding up now. The more blood that “fell” from his beard cover and accumulated in floating drops under his chin the worse it got. His blood felt like it was heating up in his body, his skin was still cool to the touch but he felt like he was being destroyed from the inside out. 

He let out a slight whimper, trying to hold it back but it was no use. He stumbled away from the patient, pulling off his mask and beard cover to reveal that his chocolate brown skin was soaked with blood underneath it, but still not a drop hit the ground, his shirt, nothing.

Nolan got up and gagged at the unbelievable sight. “Oh shit I’m going to be sick!” He ran out of the OR while Mina stayed behind and watched, unable to move her body. She had no idea what to do, she didn’t know how to help AJ. By the looks of it, he didn’t even know what was happening to him. She couldn’t even bring herself to speak. What would she even say? _Ah man, that sucks_ or _how can I help?_ She had no idea how to help him and he had no idea how to help himself.

All Mina could do is watch as the whole thing unfolded, AJ stumbled back more, nearly falling but catching himself in the medical tray table (Yeah idk what that things called lol) in the process slicing his hand open on one of the scalpels and knocking the table over, the contents scattering onto the floor. The nurse jumped and ran out as fast and she could.

AJ cussed though another loud wince, pulling the glove off of his freshly sliced hand. For a second he froze, holding his hand, palm facing the ceiling, he watched as the blood from the cut didn’t accumulate in his hand, didn’t overflow and hit the ground, in fact, it never touched his hand at all. AJ watched in horror as blood flowed out of the cut in his hand and formed large floating bubbles of blood above his hand, looking like a lava lamp. The more blood that left his body the more his blood felt like it was boiling in his body, even the cut on his hand was bleeding more than it should have been. 

Both of them had been so focused on AJs own blood that mother of them realized that the patient's blood had also begun floating out of his body from his surgical wound, quite a bit of it. 

AJs pain was becoming unbearable, he put his hands on his knees. He had always liked to believe that he had a high pain tolerance but this was way beyond that. He felt like his own cells were destroying each other. He screamed loudly in pain, standing up straight. When he did all of the floating blood scattered, spattering the walls, Mina, and covering him almost completely. In seconds, he became pale, dizzy, he hit the floor before he could even piece together what was happening.

Mina stared, shocked, wiping the blood off her face. She had no idea what just happened, but it was one of the worst things she’s ever seen. She ran to AJs side and looked for a pulse, thankfully found one, but it was weak. “Shit!” Mina ran to go find someone to help her. She pushed open the door to find Nolan laying on the floor, shaking and talking under his breath. “Nolan! Get your ass in here!” 

Nolan sat up, eyes frantic and panicked. Before he could speak Mina pulled him into the blood covered room, getting a gag out of Nolan.

“I'll handle AJ, you take the patient, okay? We need to work fast! Hopefully there’s extra blood left over in that bag because the patient lost a lot of blood! Stitch up that surgical wound then help me out, okay?!” Okafor sternly said, panic rising in her voice at the fear of losing her mentor and friend.

Nolan began to work on the patient, closing the wound after the bizarre floating blood episode, and getting their vitals under control.

Mina went to work on AJ, his nose was still subtly dripping blood and his hand was bleeding quite bad. She propped his his head up against the wall so he wouldn’t drown in his own blood while she was working, she crawled over to where the contents of the tray table had scattered and grabbed the suture, it wasn’t much but the needle and thread for actual stitches where still in the patient were AJ had left then so this was going to have to work. She made quick work of suturing his hand, grabbing a bandage and sloppily wrapping it, she could hear fire trucks in the distance, which meant they didn’t have much time to get out of there. 

Nolan knelt beside her, breathing heavy and frantic. “The f-fire! It’s going to FUCKING KILL US” Nolans voice seemed to get louder the more frantic he got. He was basically blowing out Mina's eardrums, causing her to lose her focus on AJ.

Mina winced when Nolan spoke putting a hand on Nolan arm, her other one, which had been clasping AJs nose, moved to cover her ear, for a split second she felt something, an energy flowing from Nolan to her, she removed her hand from Nolan’s arm, seeming more freaked out by the feeling. After what she had just seen with AJ anything could happen.

“Focus, Nolan!” She snapped suddenly, slapping Nolan across the face. “I have hoped every day of my existence to never have to say this but I need you, okay? Which means you have to actually have to grow a pair and help me, damn it. We need to get out of here before this fire _does_ kill us, which means we need to find a way to carry AJ and the patient out. Most people are probably outside by no so we can’t count on anyone else's help.”

Nolan only nodded vigorously, rubbing his face where she slapped him. “I may have an idea. We need a gurney though. My plan is we get one of those, put AJ and the patient on it, then we wheel out of here. Does that work?”

Mina thought about it for a second. “That’s assuming the fire hasn’t shut down the elevators,” She pointed out skeptically. “But right now that is the best we have right now so it is going to have to work. Go find a gurney, quickly! We don’t have time,” The panic in her voice had subsided a little now that she was working on AJ, in the heat of the moment she had forgotten all about the mysterious episode that had unfolded minutes before. 

Nolan ran out of the OR and ran down the hall while Mina waited with AJ. Seconds later, Nolan returned with a gurney. He parked it in front of AJ. “Arlight, load him on! I’ll grab the legs, you grab his upper body and we’ll hoist him up! Ready? Let's move!”

\----------------------------------------

“Next up on Atlanta today, a famous hospital, known to many, Chastain Park Memorial hospital, has experienced a fire tonight. No one knows how it was caused, but they are slowly getting it under control.” Bell froze, almost forgetting that he was behind the wheel. _Chastain? On… fire? I just left! How in the hell did it catch on fire?!_ He was jolted out of his thoughts as a car horn next to him blared out, making him realize that he was swerving into the next lane over. He swerved back as the car next to him gave him the finger and drove off. He had to pull over.

He found a parking spot and leaned his forehead against the wheel. _On fire. Chastain caught on fire. Chastain caught on fire. I wasn’t there either._ “Shit. SHIT!” Bell punched his steering wheel, then leaned back against the seat, skimming his hands through his hair. He had to go back. He didn’t care about his show tomorrow or his sleep. He needed to go back. There were too many people he cared about there. What if someone died? The feeling of dread filled his stomach at the thought. He had to make sure no one got seriously hurt. 

He rolled out of the parking spot and turned around, speeding back to Chastain. His mind was racing as he drove. _I should’ve been there, I hope no one got hurt, what if someones dead?! How many people are dead?!_ He started to hyperventilate as the thoughts became too much. Before he left everyone was happy, and he was happy. He just got out of a surgery with AJ, he got coffee, talked with Nurse Jessica a bit, did work, got ready to go home. It was a normal day, how could it go so wrong in less than 30 minutes?!

He pulled up to Chastain, parked his car and ran to the fire trucks.

Once he made it he looked for familiar faces, but one very particular face, AJ’s face. It seemed like less than 6 hours ago they were laughing and having a good time, and now AJ could be dead and he wasn’t even there to help. He began to hyperventilate again as he continued his search. He saw Devon’s, Irving’s, and many more familiar faces in the crowd but not the ones he was looking for. There was no AJ, no Conrad, no Jude, no Mina, no Grayson. The people he actually gave a damn about were still in the building and he couldn’t do anything but stand and watch it burn.

\----------------------------------------

Jude must have lost consciousness, probably from smoke inhalation. When he woke up he felt the smoldering heat of fire surrounding him, he was still under the desk that he had dragged Conrad under but Conrad was gone. The sprinklers were going off, the fire fighters were spraying their hoses though the broken windows, there was no way Conrad had made it out, not if Jude’s theory about water hurting him was true, which right now he was praying to god that it wasn’t. 

He curled his hands into fists as he tried to get up. He quickly remembered burns that lined his hands and forearms, pushing a pained groan though his teeth. When he looked down at his burnt hands and forearms they were wrapped tightly and sloppily but they were wrapped, the bandages were wet, Conrad was the only one that could have wrapped them. The fire was closing in around him under the small desk, Conrad was nowhere to be seen. 

_“Idiot,”_ Jude thought. _“He probably got himself killed trying to save me, damn it.”_ He felt tears stinging the corners of his eyes, he wasn’t sure if it was because of the fact he was digging his fingernails into the burnt flesh on his palms, or because Conrad was likely dead, or because he was likely going to be.

He felt his breath speed up, knowing it was only causing him to inhale the smoke all that much faster but part of him didn’t care, and the other part wasn’t thinking about it. _“Damn it, damn it.”_ He thought, cussing over and over under his breath. 

Three tours in Afghanistan and he was about to be burnt to a crisp because of a fire started by Conrad literally lighting on fire. Part of the whole thing made him chuckle in his hysteria, he had been shot, stabbed, hell even came paralyzingly close to being blown up a few times, and now he was going to die curled up under this god forsaken desk. 

He could feel his vision closing in, encased in a terrifying vignette, his body felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, the air was so heavy and full of smoke that he could hardly breathe. With each gasp of air he felt his vision closing in more. He rolled his head back against the back of the desk, trying to control his breathing, trying to grip what little consciousness he had left, he knew that if he passed out now he would never wake. 

He sat there, gasping for air, feeling the heat of the fire so close to him it felt like it could singe the hair off his arm, his eyelids were getting heavier, he couldn’t keep them open anymore. He felt like he was drifting off to sleep, the heaviness of his body was slowly fading, his burns didn’t sting anymore, the only thing he felt was the heat, and even that was beginning to fade. 

He felt his eyes close, his pain wither to nothing, the heat slowly stop burning his skin. For a second he stopped gasping for air, he stopped doing anything, he was completely at peace.

What felt like an eternity later he felt someone grab his arm, part of him thought that it really was over now, that he was dead, part of him was relieved because of it, but then he heard Conrad’s voice. The voice gave him strength, he was exhausted, the second he opened his eyes he felt it all come back, the pain, the gasping for air, his body felt like a rock. “C-Conrad?” He murmured weakly, hardly able to hear his own voice in the chaos. 

“I’m right here, Jude. I’m here.” Conrad’s voice sounded worse than Jude’s, shaky, uneven, panicked. Jude looked over his shoulder at Conrad, part of him was too shocked to speak. He watched as Conrad stood above him, his skin being pelted by the water from the sprinklers, the fire hoses, leaving his skin bright red and covered in blisters, almost as if he was being burnt by the water. His skin smoked and sizzled as each drop of water hit him and stung his skin. In his hands Conrad held a blanket, soaked in water, he was clearly in a lot of pain but Jude knew that he didn’t care. He knew that the only thing Conrad cared about was saving him. 

Conrad got down on his knees, gently wrapping Jude in the wet blanket, Jude was noticeably much much heavier than Conrad remembered him being. “It’s alright, you’re gonna be alright. I’m gonna get us out of here.” Conrad spoke fast, jumbling his words. 

Conrad ran as the hospital burned around him, holding Jude in his arms. It seemed with every minute Jude seemed to get heavier and heavier. His arms burned with the weight of Jude, but he kept running. The water falling from the ceilings burned his skin with each drop, but he knew if he stopped running he may never get out of here and Jude would surely die. 

The weight of Jude's body was becoming unbearable, and Conrad’s arms began to cramp up. Conrad then saw the doors out of the building, his pace picking up at the sight. _Just a little more_ he thought. “We’re going to make it!” He screamed as he crashed through the glass doors, rolling on the pavement and letting go of Jude in the process. Conrad quickly got up, adrenaline fueling his energy. He struggled to pick up Jude once again, then ran to the fire trucks. He needed to get Jude help, he had to. This man saved his life, and he needed to do this one thing for him at least. 

Jude hung weakly onto Conrad but it was really as tightly as he could. His body was burning, the water from the blanket made his fresh burns sting, every time Conrad moved he bit his lip and grumbled in pain. He didn’t say anything to Conrad, couldn’t speak. Even if he could, he wasn’t sure what to say, he wasn’t even sure if all of this was real are not, his thoughts all felt so foggy, he felt so tired, and his body just felt heavier and heavier. 

On their way to the fire trucks they passed Bell. Conrad seemed to not even notice him, Jude’s eyes were closed, he had bitten his lip so hard it was dripping blood. The two of them were both badly injured, although, it was strange Conrad didn’t seem to have a single actual burn on his body but his skin was bright red and littered with blisters.

Bell did a double take as he saw Conrad with Jude, all banged up and in horrible condition. “Oh my god, Conrad, what the hell happened?! Here let me help you. I’ll take Jude.” Bell held out his arms to accept Jude and take the weight off of Conrad's weak limbs.

Conrad could hardly bear Jude’s weight anymore, it seemed like he was only getting heavier and Conrad’s blistered arms could hardly keep him up anymore. He reluctantly handed Jude over to Bell, revealing that his forearms, where Jude had been resting against him in the soaked blanket, were much more red and blistered than the rest of his body. As soon as Conrad handed Jude over he took a step back, he couldn’t risk hurting anyone else.

Conrad's eyes shifted towards the ground when he began to speak, his voice was much less shaky than before but he sounded unexplainably scared. Bell could tell because it was something he had never heard in Conrad’s voice, he was acting very strange and out of character. “We were on ground zero when the fire started, Jude got burnt up pretty bad trying to save who he could, I got burnt trying to save him,” Conrad lies. Although, he supposed it wasn’t all a lie, technically, that was what had happened, in a way.

“Oh god you look really bad,” Bell said before the weight of Jude took him off guard, causing him to lose his balance a little but quickly regain it. “Here, lean your weight on me until we can get you to the ambulance.” Bell offers his shoulder for Conrad to lean on.

Conrad shook his head quickly, “I’m fine. I don’t need a shoulder to lean on and I don’t need an ambulance. I can treat these wounds myself. There’s no need to burden them with it, they have more pressing patients.” Even as the words left Conrad’s mouth he knew they weren’t true, his whole body hurt like hell but he figured whatever happened to him was triggered by something Jude did, it wasn’t much to go off of but right now he was praying that it was enough to stop him from hurting more people. 

Bell nodded, saying no more to Conrad. He moved quickly to an ambulance, Jude in his arms, leaving Conrad where he stood.

After Bell dropped off Jude, he went back and wrapped an arm around Conrad and used his other arm to wrap Conrad’s arm around his shoulders. “Lean your weight on me, please,” Bell gently said, knowing Conrad could pry away. Bell didn’t say anything, but when Conrad came in contact with Bell, he felt an extreme warmth radiating off his skin which made him wince a bit.

As soon as Bell touched him, Conrad tried to push him away. Bell got as far as to put Conrad’s arm over his shoulders before Conrad shoved him away. He pushed Bell back with enough force that he fell back onto the ground, grinding his teeth to conceal the scream of pain that quickly made its way into his throat when his body hit the ground, which was still wet from that morning's downpour. 

“Don’t fucking touch me, damn it!” Conrad screamed after hitting the ground. He could not hurt anyone else, it was already bad enough that he had severely injured Jude. This whole thing was his fault so anyone who was hurt in the fire, died in the fire, that was all on him. Suddenly his expression shifted, the anger that was painted across his face turned to sadness in seconds as he helped himself off the ground, his hands sporting new strange blisters from when he had caught himself on the rain covered ground. “Just stay away from me,” he muttered, taking a few large steps back from Bell. 

Bell looked at him, surprised at the outburst. He wanted to help him so bad, but Conrad may have another freak out episode like he just did a few seconds ago. He took a deep breath, trying to conceal his anger and not scream at him for being an idiot and not letting him help him. The only thing he could get out through gritted teeth was: “What the fuck is wrong with you, are you out of your mind? You look like shit. Why won’t you let me help you? Is your head so far up your ass that you can’t even get my help?!” He was quiet at first, but by the time he finished his sentence he was yelling. The stress of the fire and being pushed away and yelled at for doing his job was making him reach his limit.

Conrad’s sadness quickly flipped back to rage when Bell said that, for a second he said nothing in response. “Why don’t you just stop pretending that you understand everything!? You have no idea what is going on here! I don’t need your help! You look like shit and you're not one of the ones that just walked out of a burning building! Why don’t you do your job and help the people that actually need you! That is your hospital that’s on fire!” He snapped, pointing to Chastain. “The least you could do is—“ he froze for a second, watching as Mina and Nolan pushed through the glass doors in the front of the building, Mina was covered in blood and Nolan was pushing the gurney with both the patient and AJ on it. AJ, even from the distance they were at, looked absolutely awful and was covered from head to toe in blood. 

Bell saw Conrad’s attention shift, and he turned to see what he was staring at. His eyes widened as he watched the doctors leaving the burning building. He looked back at Conrad, his facial expression dropping. “Fine. I won’t help you, because they need me more!” He pointed at them, his hand shaking as if his tremor returned, but he didn’t see it, but Conrad saw it. Bell turned around, left Conrad, and ran to help Nolan and Mina.

Conrad noticed the tremor but thought nothing much of it, as soon as Bell was gone he reached into his pocket, jangling the crushed pieces of stone. He was thankful that, as far as he could tell no one had been affected by it. He let out a small sigh of relief and pulled his hand out of his pocket, the one that had started this whole thing. It looked completely normal besides the painful blisters that covered it. “What the hell is happening to me?” Conrad murmured to himself.

Over by AJ, as Bell ran over, Mina demanded that Nolan pick up the patient and carry him to the ambulance, she had already fabricated an entire lie about what went down in the OR, there was no way she was telling anyone the story about the floating blood. Nolan reluctantly picked up the patient, complaining about how heavy he was before leaving and heading for the ambulance. AJ, surprisingly, was awake but he was delirious and weak from the blood loss so Mina couldn’t count on his help backing up her story.

“He slipped in the OR,” Mina called to Bell as he approached the gurney, which was at a stand still since Nolan had stopped pushing it. “He cut his hand pretty bad, lost a lot of blood, he’s going to need blood asap,” she said quickly. AJ rolled onto his side, grabbing his stomach and letting out a quiet, low, grumble. 

“Okay, I’ll wheel AJ to get some blood in him, you look in pretty bad shape too, I suggest getting some help of your own. You’re covered in blood how did that happen? You’re not bleeding too are you?” Bell ran to the back of the gurney, and was getting ready to push it while looking at Mina with concern etched on his face.

“I’m fine,” Mina said after a moment of silence, in the chaos she hadn’t calculated Bell asking questions into her story. She stood in silence, trying to figure out how to answer Bell’s question. _“How did this happen?”_ She thought to herself, trying to figure out something to say that wouldn’t sound completely insane, in other words, not the truth. 

While she was thinking, AJ got around to speaking first. “It floated,” AJ laughed deliriously, causing him to wince. 

Mina’s eyes widened for a second, quickly trying to rebound from AJ’s comment. “He’s clearly delirious,” she said, her voice sounding almost a little panicked. “Don’t listen to him.” 

Bell nodded slowly, eyes going from Mina to AJ, then back to Mina. “Right, delirious…” He put his hand on his forehead, trying to wrap his head around this. He finally sighed and shrugged. “Whatever the story is, we have to get AJ some help.” He started to wheel the gurney down the walk path, trying his best to make the ride as comfortable as possible for AJ. “Hold on AJ, you’ll be okay, I promise.”

“You know, Randy,” AJ laughed, wincing again. “I’ve always liked you, You’re really gentle, dawg…” He paused for a second, zoning out as if he forgot he was speaking. “And kind,” AJ resumed. “And handsome,” he mumbled. 

Mina rolled her eyes, a disgusted look crossing her face. “Yeah, he is clearly delirious,” she looked back at Bell, as they were walking. 

“And you are a good father…” he stopped again. “Wait, that annoying secretary of yours _is_ your son right? If not, he would have been fired a long time ago.” He laughed deliriously again, wrapping his arms around himself, clenching his sides, and coughing, clearly he was in a lot of pain, which didn’t add up with Mina’s story that he had just cut his hand.

Bell chuckled a little. “Sure, Grayson is my son.” Bell knew there was no way AJ would remember this, he was too far gone in his own world to ever remember, so why not joke with him a little. “And yes, I am pretty handsome, I do think so myself.” They wheeled up to an ambulance, where Bell recorded his observations to the doctor, and the paramedics got him some blood fairly quickly. Once Bell knew AJ would be alright, he left his side and looked at Mina instantly. He gave her the _We need to talk, and there’s no getting out of it_ glare. He motioned with his head that she should follow him, which she did, no questions asked. Once they got away from the crowd, Bell turned on Mina instantly. “AJ Austin just got a cut on his hand, huh? Then why the hell was he grabbing his sides in pain? I’m sorry Mina, but your story is shit. It doesn’t add up. Tell me the truth for god's sake.”

Mina shifted uncomfortably for a second, this definitely hadn’t been anticipated when she had come up with the story, she knew it didn’t add up but she was kinda busy when she had come up with it so she hadn’t had time to come up with much more than that he had cut his hand.

“He also fell,” she said after a second, usually she was a good lair but she was completely butchering this. “He probably hurt his ribs or back when he hit the ground,” she lied again. “Look, I don’t really know. Nolan and I stayed focused on the patient until we were done with him, before worrying about AJ.”

Bell laughed. “Wow, so now you aren’t even paying attention to your own co-worker, your teammate, your friend?! He could’ve died, and you were just going to work on the patient while he bled out?!” Bell began to vigorously scratch his forearm, getting red marks on his skin. “If I was there I would’ve helped AJ first, let Nolan work on the patient, then once I knew he was okay I would’ve gone back to the patient! Why didn’t you make sure he was safe?!” His hand moved from his forearm to his neck where he began the same vigorous harsh scratching that he did on his arm.

Mina watched him scratch, a slightly concerned look crossing her face. She knew she would never live down the accusations she was facing him with, what he was saying she should have done is really exactly what she had done, but she knew that taking the bullet on this one was better than telling the truth. AJ’s floating blood wasn’t her problem, nor something she had any right to go around telling people about, she respected her mentor enough to keep that secret for him, even if it meant taking this from Bell. 

“I stayed with the patient because that is my job,” she said unconvincingly. “Maybe you should see one of the paramedics, your skin seems pretty irritated,” she changed the subject. “If you are going to scream at me for doing my job, the least you can do is get checked out while you do it.” 

Bell’s eyes widened at the comment, nails digging into his skin. He then began to laugh, it was slow at first, but then it got louder until he was throwing his head back and laughing. “I need help?! Have you fucking seen yourself, Mina?! You’re covered in blood! Blood! Care to explain that, Mina?!” Bell screamed, his hand now scratching his shoulder so deep that it drew blood, but he didn’t notice, he was too enraged to notice how he looked like a psychopath and how people were beginning to stare in his direction.

Mina grabbed both Bells wrists, preventing him from scratching. “You need to calm the hell down!” She snapped, “Whatever is going on with you, I don’t have time to deal with it! What happened in the OR, happened! I don’t care what you would have done if you were there because you weren’t! But you _are_ here now and instead of helping you are screaming at me! So why don’t you calm the hell down and actually help! I’m not going to stand here and listen to this when Jude, AJ, Conrad, and dozens of injured patients need my help! So if you want to be selfish and just stand here and yell at me because you’re stressed that _your_ hospital is on fire then fine! But I am not going to listen to it!” She yelled, the entire time tightly gripping Bell’s wrists. 

Bell stared at Mina. His face slowly drooping into a frown. He moved his hands a little to get free, but he quickly gave up. He sighed and hung his head, tears forming at the edges of his eyes, but he tried his best to hide them. “I’m sorry, Mina, I’ve just been really stressed that’s all. This place means a lot to me, and to see it burn-“ Bell looked up at Chastain, blinking the tears away. “It just hurts, and to see you guys injured like this… it hurts even more. I’m sorry I’m yelling at you, Mina.” He let in a shaky breath and looked Mina in the eyes.

Mina took a second, scanning Bell's face before releasing his wrists before taking a deep breath to calm herself down. “Look,” She said, her voice more gentle and soft then before but no more gentle than her normal voice. “I’m sorry I lied, you're not an idiot and you know that there is more to what happened in the OR with AJ but that is not my story to tell. If you want to know what really happened then you need to speak with him but he is much too delirious to tell you anything right now. You are better off helping with what you can. I know this place means a lot to you, it does to all of us but you can’t do anything to save Chastain, but you can save the people that work here.” When Mina spoke her voice sounded much more sincere than usual, she was saying a lot more than she usually did as well. “This place means a lot to all of us, we work here, Conrad and Jude practically live here. Right now what matters is the people who are hurt, okay? Nolan and I are fine, AJ, Conrad, Jude, they are the ones that really need help.”

Bell nodded, rubbing his upper arms with his hands, smearing the blood that was on his shoulder, wincing then looking at the blood smeared on his shoulder. He shook his head to brush off the pain and looked back at Mina. “You’re right. I tried helping Conrad, but he pushed me away like a madman and freaked out at me. I don’t know Conrad extremely well, but I do know that he is acting off for sure.” Bell searched the crowd for Conrad, but saw no sign of him. “I hate to say it, and please keep a secret, and if you don’t, I’ll fire you, but I’m worried about him.”

Mina looked up, scanning the crowd for Conrad as well. “That does seem like him. He’s incredibly stubborn, you of all people would know that,” she said a little slowly as she continued to search. She was starting to get a bad feeling about all of this. After AJ’s floating blood episode and now Conrad acting strange, not to mention Bell’s “stressed” scratching, she was beginning to think that there may have been more to what was happening then any of them knew. That’s when she remembered. 

“Conrad was sick this morning,” she said suddenly, looking back at Bell. “He looked terrible, sweating, the works, Irving was worried so he paged Jude about it.” She wasn’t sure what if anything that had to do with the fire but things were starting to almost connect. “His patients have been complaining all day about him “burning them”, but you didn’t hear that from me. I’d say you definitely have reason to be concerned.” 

“When I tried to help Conrad, I grabbed his arm and he burned me too before pushing me away. I definitely think there’s something out of the ordinary happening here.” Bell's eyes widened as he looked at Chastain, that was almost fully extinguished of the fire. “Do you think? No. That’s impossible.” Bell shook his head and subconsciously began to scratch the back of his neck.

Mina looked back at Chastain too, she knew immediately that what was on her mind was in Bells too. If he was thinking it and he didn’t know anything about AJs floating blood then maybe she wasn’t as crazy as she was thinking she was. “Let’s not try to get to far ahead of ourselves,” she said, looking back at Bell, but something in her voice told Bell that part of her believed what he was thinking. “I think there is a logical explanation for all of this.” 

“Hopefully. I’m not really a believer of the supernatural or magic, so I’m just going to think it was an electrical problem that caused this for now,” Bell said while wincing and removing his hand from his neck to find blood. He scratched his neck so deep that it drew blood, and his hand was shaking uncontrollably while he stared in shock. “Wh- What the… I- huh?!” 

Mina looked at him, a look of concern crossing her face for a second. “Hey, are you alright?” It wasn’t something she normally would have asked, but Bell was acting really strange. It seemed like not a single thing had gone right today so far, and it was still early, honestly at this point there wasn’t much that should surprise her.

“I- I thought my tremors had gone away… maybe it’s all the stress?” He shakily said while he began to itch the top of his hand, making Mina wince at how intense the scratching was. She knew for a fact that this was not normal, and his itching was causing serious harm to himself. “I can’t stop itching, it itches so bad,” Bell whined, as he continued to itch his hand.

Mina grabbed his wrists again, gentler this time then before. “Maybe you should go see one of the paramedics, I’m sure they could get you something for that.” As Mina watched the blood drip off of Bell she was instantly reminded of the haunting occurrences in the OR, subconsciously she looked down. Her eyes widened when she noticed the floating drops of blood accumulating around Bell’s knees, surely enough, just as before, not a single drop had hit the pavement although the drops had fallen farther. She looked back up at Bell, still holding his wrists, focusing now on trying to distract him from the floating blood. “You know what? I think we should see a paramedic about that,” panic was suddenly etched through her voice. 

Bell looked where she was looking to see his blood floating at his knees. He jumped back like a scared cat, letting out a gasp. “How the hell?! What’s happening to my blood?!” Bell's voice cracked as he screamed at Mina. Shock and disbelief plastered on his face.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said quickly, mentally facepalming afterwards. “ _Of course it's something,_ ” she thought to herself, trying to come up with a quick response to Bell's question that made sense but coming up with nothing. “This day just keeps getting worse,” She grumbled, not even really meaning to say it out loud. 

“What do you mean it’s nothing?! My bloods floating! I have tremors, my body itches all over! Something is very wrong with me!” Bell started to hyperventilate because of all the shock.

“I don’t think the floating blood had anything to do with you, Bell,” she said, trying to be reassuring but she knew that statement didn’t mean much unless she had proof it wasn’t him. “There’s nothing wrong with you, you are just stressed, so calm the hell down. Come with me and I can prove floating blood has nothing to do with you. Just calm down, the last thing anyone needs today is the ex CEO of this hospital having a heart attack in the parking lot. Kim would have a field day with your career.” 

Bell looked at Mina, slowly trying to calm down. “I’ll calm down. I’m not dying today, but show me where this floating blood is coming from please.”

“I will, just come with me,” she was certain that this was probably a terrible idea but at the moment it was all she had. She led Bell to the ambulance that AJ was in, he was just laying there on the gurney pretty nonchalantly, getting a blood transfusion. 

AJ smiled, clearly still a little delirious, at them when they walked by. “I knew you couldn’t stay away,” he chuckled, this time it didn’t seem to cause him nearly as much pain as it had before. Even in all of his deliriousness, however, he could once again feel his body heating up from the inside out. 

Bell looked at AJ, then back at Mina. “You’re telling me… that AJ is doing this? How in the hell is that even possible??”

Mina grumbled to herself for a second, she had already gone through all of the effort to keep this from Bell but she, although she would never admit it, was a little worried about him and this could at least take a little stress off his shoulders. “I don’t know,” she sighed, stepping into the ambulance and motioning for the paramedics already in there to leave, they did so. “But it’s him, I know it.” She sat down next to AJ and began unwrapping his sloppily wrapped hand. AJ tried to pull his hand away but with him being relatively weak it was easy for Mina to stop him. 

She slowly and carefully unwrapped his hand, setting the bloody bandages on to the corner of the bed. The bandages were covered in blood yet there was not a drop on his hand. Mina turned AJs hand so that his palm was facing the top of the ambulance, earning a slight wince from AJ, and watched as, just like in the OR, blood began to flow out of AJs hand and into the air above it.

“Wow… that’s… not human,” Bell said, eyes fixated on the floating blood. He slowly put a hand out and touched the blood, it hit against his hand then floated away. “This is unreal. It’s impossible. How did this happen to him?”

“I don’t know,” Mina mumbled. “We were in the OR and everything was fine… until the fire started. We were stitching up the patient and his nose started bleeding, a lot, he stumbled and cut his hand and this happened. The blood exploded everywhere and he passed out… that’s what really happened in the OR. I’m sure you get now why I didn’t tell you, something strange is happening. I don’t understand it.” 

“Yeah. I get why you didn’t tell me, and I don’t get it either. Whatever happened to AJ I feel happened to Conrad too, but it’s just different abilities? And I’m just trying to think of how he got this strange power. Was it exposure to something? Maybe something they ate? It’s stumping me.” Bell began to itch at his shoulder again, and Mina noticed that there were huge red marks marking his arms and neck. He looked worse off then when he got here.

Mina got up and grabbed Bell’s wrists again, “I don’t know how it happened, and we don’t know for sure that Conrad has any ability at all but I do know that you need to calm down and stop itching or so help me I will handcuff you or something.”

AJs hand was bleeding quite a bit now, Mina was distracted by Bell but AJs hand was bleeding way more than it should have been considering that the cut had already been sutured by Mina in the OR. Just as before, the more blood that escaped the cut and floated above his hand, the more uncomfortable he got, the more he felt like his blood was boiling in his own body.

Mina, back to AJ, continued focusing on Bell. AJ was quiet so Mina assumed he was okay. “If it was an exposure thing than me, Nolan, Jude, would all be affected too and all of us are fine. Jude was just hurt in the fire. Let’s just try not to worry about it right now. You need to calm down, I think you're getting a stress rash.” 

“Guess you’re right,” Bell shrugged. He examined his scratched up arms and looked at his hands that were also joined by scratches and blood. _What’s wrong with me? I never scratch myself, even under stressful circumstances._ He shook his head, clearing his thoughts.

Mina went to say something back to him but she was interrupted by a loud crash, she jumped a little and immediately jumped out of the ambulance, she immediately thought that it was something to do with Chastain but what she found was somehow worse than that. 

“What the hell did you do to me!?” Conrad screamed as he grabbed a man by the blazer and slammed him against the side of the fire truck that was parked in front of the ambulance that she had just stepped out of. 

Bell peeked his head out next to hers and gasped. “Uh oh, This could only go horrible.”

The man Conrad had grabbed by the blazer, leaned into his ear, making no attempt to push Conrad off of him. “You know? I wouldn’t speak like that to the only man that is preventing you from leveling the block.” 

Conrad’s eyes widened for a second, putting an arm across the man’s chest and pushing him further into the fire truck. “I’m only going to ask this once: who are you,” Conrad was whispering now too, he could feel his body heating up, his blisters stung and burnt against the coarse fabric of the mans suit but in the heat of the moment he hardly felt anything. 

“Finally, a relevant question. Names Martin,” The man responded smugly, he didn’t seem to be affected by the heat radiating off of Conrad’s body at all. He actually appeared quite enthused about the whole thing. “And I believe you have something that belongs to me.” He reached down and patted Conrad’s pockets, smirking when he felt the crushed remnants off the rock in Conrad’s pocket, earning him another angered slam against the fire truck. By now most everyone was watching.

“You already broke it,” Martin chuckled with a smirk. “And here I was thinking I was going to have to do that myself. I figured you’d be clumsy enough to do it, you did run into me while jogging this morning,” he smirked. “I guess in a way you brought this on yourself.” 

Conrad smashed him against the fire truck once again, earning a small grunt and an annoyed look from Martin. “Shut the hell up and fix me,” Conrad snapped.

Martin was quiet for a moment before busting out in hysterical laughter. He pushed Conrad off of him with ease, making Conrad seem like he was no heavier than a feather. 

When Martin shoved him Conrad practically flew back onto the wet ground, it stung his skin, irritated his blisters but Conrad was too mad to even notice the pain. “What the hell is this guy on,” Conrad grumbled angrily to himself, trying to get up but being met with a swift kick in the ribs from Martin.

“Don’t you see!” Martin was screaming now, pushing his messy dark brown hair out of his face. “There is nothing to fix! You should consider yourself lucky!” He swiftly kicked Conrad in the ribs again as Conrad moved to get up. “It’s very rare to have two powers you know!? Lucky for you I am disabling one, or you would have killed them all the second your hot head got to you! But I think it’s time that they all know the other!” He grabbed Conrad by the shirt, pulling him to his feet and pushing him away. “Tell me, _Dr. Hawkins!_ Who set the hospital on fire!” Martin lifted his arm swiftly, ice cold water shooting from his fingertips and splashing across Conrad’s chest. 

Conrad put his arms up to try and protect himself but it was no use, as soon as the water hit him he screamed in pain. He felt the warmth in his body spike as he erupted in flames, not just his arm this time, both arms, raging fire connecting the flames across his shoulders, burning off the remainder of his shirt. The fire didn’t go out this time, he panicked for a moment before looking back up at Martin, a crazy look crossing his face. His eyes began changing color, from the usual dark brown to a light orange and growing darker. 

Before he could attack Martin, he was pushed to the floor by another force, it was Bell, a furious look on his face. Conrad hit the floor while Bell flexed his hands trying to erase the feeling of burning from them. He briefly touched Conrad, but it still burned. “You did this?! You burnt down my hospital?!” Bell screamed, silence following as everyone observed the situation.

When Conrad hit the ground the flames went out, the orange in his eyes reverting back to his usual hazel brown. This time when he hit the ground the water underneath him evaporated instantly. For a second a confused look crossed his face as he looked up to see Bell standing over him, he quickly got on his feet and shoved Bell back. “Get the hell out of my way!” He snapped, honing back in on Martin but to his surprise Martin was already gone, he pivoted back to Bell. “You let him get away!” He paid no regards to anything that Bell had said about the hospital, right now all he cared about was Martin, and he was gone. He was so upset it was like he was suddenly in a world of his own. 

“Shut up! Shut the hell up! You have no room to talk when it was you who burned down this hospital!” Bell screamed, pushing Conrad back, not taking any of his shit. “It’s because of you that so many people are injured! AJ, Jude, patients for god's sake, Conrad, patients are injured because of you! You don’t even care either! All you care about is that smug ass that ran off! Do you even realize that you’ve hurt people?!” Bell breathed heavily after he finished his rant, staring Conrad right in the eyes.

Conrad’s rage seemed to only grow based on the comment. He stood right where he was for a good second before moving, speaking, before doing anything. “How dare you,” he grumbled quietly, looking at the ground. “How dare you!” He repeated, only this time screaming. “How dare you accuse me of not caring about them!” He grabbed Bell by the shirt and slammed him against the side of the fire truck, more forcefully then he had Martin. “You have no idea what happened! So don’t you dare for a second think that any of this is my fault! Need I remind you which one of us guided patients out! Which one of us carried a man out on his dying breath! Huh!?” He slammed Bell against the fire truck again. “Which one of us did that, Bell!? And which one of us stood on the sidewalk like a coward and watched _his_ hospital burn to the ground!?” The whole time as Conrad spoke his body was heating up, his hand becoming hotter and hotter as they clenched Bells shirt and slammed him against the fire truck a third time. His eyes, while he spoke, morphed from their hazel brown to a deep dark red. 

Bell swung a fist at Conrad, making contact with his face and breaking his hold on him. Bell clumsily walked away from the firetruck and stood at a safe distance from Conrad. “Who started the fucking fire in the first place?! Your argument has no valid point! If you didn’t start this damn fire we would be fine!” Bell looked down at his shirt which now had burn marks in it from Conrad's hold on him. He knew he was playing with fire (literally) so he had to play it safe.

Conrad grabbed the side of his face where Bell punched him, looking up at Bell when he moved away, his now deep red eyes cutting through him like knives. He didn’t say another word, his entire body was smoking now, he was dripping sweat, he looked like he was about to burst into flames any second now. He stayed silent, walking over to Bell and grabbing him, grabbing him by the throat, sweeping his legs out from underneath him, and slamming him into the wet pavement. 

Bell wheezed as the air left his lungs, but he was unable to breathe back in, as Conrad kept his hold on his throat. Flaming heat from Conrad's hands shot into Bell like boiling water, making him let out a strangled scream. The pain, although only applied for about a couple of seconds, was becoming unbearable. Tears filled his eyes as he tried to rip Conrad’s hands off of him, but if he touched him his hands burned. He knew he was going to lose this fight for sure. His stupid temper got the best of him, and he managed to pour gasoline on the fire that was already big enough. He was an idiot, and he was going to die here, under the hands of Conrad Hawkins.

“Hey!” Conrad heard a voice scream, feeling hands weakly push him. The push didn’t affect him at all but he immediately released his hand from Bell’s throat when he looked up and saw Jude standing over him, standing may have been too strong a word considering that Jude barely was. He looked awful, he was pale, slouched, hardly keeping himself up right. Conrad’s eyes followed the tips of Jude’s finger down his badly burnt hand and forearm. He felt the color drain from his own face as he watched the taller man take an unsteady step toward him and grab him by the shirt, struggling to pull him to his feet.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Jude said, his voice was surprisingly soft and gentle. “This isn’t you,” Jude’s voice was practically a whisper, pained winces and gasps lingering though every breath he took. “I know you, and I know you didn’t mean to start that fire. Bell did nothing to you and there is no need for this…” He paused for a second. “I haven’t seen you act like this since…” He stopped, staring into Conrad’s eyes as he watched the deep red wash out of them.

Conrad stood almost in shock as if it had just all hit him, what he had done. His eyes flickered from Jude’s eyes to the section of the hospital that was now gone because of him, to the injured patients, visitors, to his hand. The hand that started it all, the one he had burnt Jude’s wrist with, the one that had moments before been around Bell’s neck. Something was wrong with him, he didn’t know what had gotten into him, he could have killed Martin, Bell, he hadn’t killed anyone in a long time but moments ago he was seriously considering killing them both. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he did know one thing. As long as he was here he was endangering the lives of everyone else. He reached up slowly and grabbed both of Jude’s hands off of his own shirt, Jude expected it to burn but suddenly Conrad’s skin was relatively cool to the touch.

“J-Jude,” Conrad’s voice came out as nothing more than a distant mumble. He looked back up at Jude, feeling tears sting the corner of his eyes, when he met the half concerned, half disappointed look on the taller man’s face. “I-I’m so sorry.” He felt a single tear fall as the words escaped his mouth, it didn’t burn, not like all the other water that had touched him had.

Jude wiggled a hand from Conrad’s grip to wipe the tear away but Conrad quickly moved away from him, looking around again. This was his fault, he started this fire, he nearly got Jude killed, nearly killed Bell, all the injured patients. This was his fault. He couldn’t stay here, he couldn’t watch people have to fix everything that he broke, what if he did it again? What if people died next time? Martin told him that he had the power to “level the block”, what if he did? He felt his breath speed up, his mind was panicking, he didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know what he could do. He looked back up at Jude for just a second, he seemed mostly concerned now. Jude took a slow shuffle towards him and he realized there was only one thing he _could_ do. He turned away from Jude, eyes flickering to Bell on the ground before he took off running, running as fast as he could, as far as he could. He didn’t know where he would go, he just knew that he could no longer be there.


	2. Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AJ fears his new found ability may become ability may become a threat to the hospital and jeopardize his position in the OR. Conrad returns with a specific purpose, despite his lingering fear of hurting anyone else, things turn sideways quick leaving him heartbroken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so little disclaimer here, I (Red) did most of the writing for Conrad in this chapter. I know it seems kinda ooc but there is a number of reasons for it, one that is explained in the chapter and a few bigger ones will explained in the coming chapters, so just know its for a reason. For now, however, just enjoy the 110% Conrad whump that makes up most of the second half of this chapter :) Without further ado, enjoyyyyyyy!
> 
> ~Red and Snuf

Bell jolted awake, breathing quickly and heavily, a nightmare clouding his mind. He groaned and put his head in his hands and leaned back onto his pillow. He had nightmares every night since the incident. He knew once a nightmare woke him up, there was no going back to bed. He got up and walked to the bathroom to take a cold shower and try to wipe the nightmare away. 

His nightmares mostly consisted of fire, and his world burning around him. They all normally ended with a hand on his neck and him dying. 

He turned off the water, the shower not helping the nightmares leave from his mind. He patted down his body with the towel as he walked to the mirror to brush his teeth, and shave, his normal routine. Bell wrapped the towel around his waist, then looked in the mirror and that’s when he saw it. The god forsaken scar that was plastered on his neck. The scar that would always remind him of that dreadful day.

_ Conrad ran off, leaving everyone behind. The minute Conrad let him go he went to take a deep breath, but it burned to breathe. He rolled onto his side, gasping for air, but the only thing that he could feel was burning and pain. Tears pulled at his eyes as he coughed and tried to catch his breath, but it was no use. He really was going to die here. People began to crowd around him, and he felt Okafor's hand on his side, trying to roll him back onto his back. She finally got him onto his back, but he let out a scream of pain as his neck moved, sending burning pain through his body.  _

_ The rest was pretty blurry, as he was in and out of consciousness. He remembered being put on a gurney and wheeled into the ambulance, but the rest was blurry to him. Then he woke up, the pain in his neck reduced to a minimum. He woke up to see Okafor and AJ by his side, Mina’s hand on AJ, trying to hold the delirious man back from Bell. Her other hand was on Bell’s chest. The pain he had was no more than an ache and he felt like the burn never happened. _

Now, three days later, here he is, staring at the horrible scar painted on his neck with no pain, and no idea on how he survived that. His throat should’ve swelled up and he should’ve died there, but here he was, still alive.

After shaving and brushing his teeth he went to get dressed. For the past three days he tried to cover up this ugly scar, but he couldn’t fully hide it, and he always got a question from a patient asking what happened, or a staring kid. It was absolute hell. The only thing that could kind of hide it was his leather jacket and a collared shirt, which he had worn every day since the incident, and he will continue to wear. 

He pulled up to chastain, and got ready for another stressful day. Thankfully the fire didn’t spread as far as it could’ve. It only burned the room where it started, a couple to its sides and the room above and below, but it still got a lot of concern and questions from their patients. It drove Bell nuts, and he hated their questions, they were all the same.  _ “Is Chastain alright? Is Chastain going to collapse? Are we going to die?”  _ Pathetic. You aren’t going to die, Chastain is fine. It’s all under control.

When Bell stepped out of his car there was a man standing on the sidewalk, staring up at the partly burnt Chastain. “A shame isn't it?” The man said, shifting the toothpick he had in his mouth to the other side. “That prick burnt down your hospital and ran, I say someone ought to teach him a lesson,” a slight smirk crossed the man’s face as the words left his mouth and he turned to face Bell. Bell could instantly recognize him, it was the man that Conrad had shoved against the ambulance the other day. “And judging by that scar on your neck that you are trying  _ so desperately  _ to cover up, I’d say you want nothing more then for it to be you,” Martin’s smirk widened with a slight chuckle. 

“What the hell are you doing here? Who the hell are you?” Bell felt a sudden feeling of rage and an urge to punch this idiot in the face. He moved his hand up to his neck, now more self conscious about it than ever.

“I think you’re asking the wrong questions, dearest Randy,” Martin laughed smugly, taking a step towards Bell. “I think the correct question is: why are  _ you  _ here? Flame boy could have killed you, he couldn’t have killed me, but he  _ could _ have killed you and he didn’t. Tell me now, rich boy,” Martin smirked, looking over at Bell’s Porsche before flicking his eyes back to Bell. “Why didn’t he? Or, better yet,” he stepped around Bell, leaning into his ear and running his fingers across the scar on Bell’s neck, the heat in his hand was hauntingly similar to Conrad’s. “ _ How _ didn’t he? That scar is a pretty nasty one, a wound like that must have taken months to heal up, yet the incident happened days ago. Interesting, isn’t it? The wondering?” As he spoke, Martin slowly slipped his hand into his own pocket with the hand that wasn’t on Bell’s neck and pulled out one of the mysterious blue stones that had caused so much chaos just days before and slipped it into Bell’s pocket. “Not to mention your friend with the floating blood, be a shame if something were to happen to him huh?” Bell could practically hear Martin’s smirk grow as the man whispered in his ear. “I wouldn’t worry about it. You’ll understand why what happens next has to happen, one day. Do yourself favor and keep the people you love close, your enemies closer. Conrad Hawkins is much more powerful than you know, but lucky for you, scars tell us who we are, and you’ve got lots more coming.” Martin’s devious chuckle grew in Bell’s ear.

He slapped Martin's hand away from his neck, backing up a couple of feet. “Stay the hell away from me!” Bell grabbed his own neck, hoping to protect it from any oncoming forgein hands. This guy was really getting on his nerves, and he had to get away from him.

Luckily for him it seemed like Martin was far ahead of him, when Bell looked up he was no longer there, as if he had just vanished into thin air. He felt a hand creep up his shoulder, “I’ll be seeing you again, very soon, Randolph,” the man’s voice lingered through the air but there was nobody there. Then, nothing. 

Bell stood, frozen with fear. Did that guy just disappear? Was he even there to begin with? Is this all just in his head? His hand slowly moved to his wrist and he began to scratch it unknowingly. He shook his head, cleared his thoughts and began to walk into Chastain. 

Thankfully his schedule today was busy, and he had a lot of surgeries, but his scrubs wouldn’t hide the huge scar plastered on his neck. He knew he had to just put up with the stares and try his best not to be seen. He went into his office and began to change into his scrubs, and that’s when he felt it, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a weird stone. He turned it over and over in his hand, examining the curves and color. That man he ran into this morning must have snuck it in his pocket. As he was holding the stone he used his other hand to scratch his neck, feeling a prickly feeling rising up in his body. He shivered and put it down, and continued to change. After putting on his scrubs he eyed the stone. He picked it up and dropped it in his pants pocket, then went to go scrub into his surgery with AJ.

AJ smiled up at Bell when he entered, just like it was any other day, it had been evidently clear to Bell that AJ didn’t remember a lick of anything that had happened after the fire days ago. That was probably for the best, the man’s floating blood was probably better off as his own problem unless he chose to tell Bell but he hadn’t said a word about it since the fire. AJ was honestly trying to forget it anyway, nothing of the sorts had happened to him since the fire, to his knowledge, it didn’t give him an explanation but it gave him a reason to forget about it. 

“Let’s get this show on the road,” AJ said, putting his hand out to Jessica for the scalpel, this was his first day back after the fire, they were in the same OR that him, Nolan, and Mina had been in, part of the whole thing made his skin crawl. He tried to stay focused on the operation but his mind was racing.

Bell only nodded his approval, and then got to work. He was different from his usual self that would smile and respond with a comment like “We got this,” or “let's do this,” Bell was just quiet. He couldn’t focus on talking, his skin felt like it was crawling inside and out, causing major itching tendencies, but he couldn’t itch himself due to sanitation and the fact he was performing surgery. After what seemed like days, but only a few hours, they finished the surgery. The minute they close, Bell leaves, dumping his gloves and gown into the bin, too rushed to even take off his glasses. He began to quickly wash his hands while also itching them at the same time. His body felt like hell, and the temptation to itch was becoming worse and worse. Before he could even finish washing his hands he began to itch at his arms, frantically moving up to his face and neck, then back down again, trying to cease the pain.

AJ watched him, for a second before walking over to him, having already taken off his gown and mask, and grabbing Bell’s wrists. He seemed to almost hesitate before doing it, that wasn’t like him, AJ Austin didn’t hesitate before doing anything, but he did before doing this. “Chill, dawg,” he said, softly, the baritone in his voice shining though as he held Bells wrists gently in his hands. “You’re gonna make yourself bleed, this is a sterile environment  _ still _ you know?” AJ joked but his face showed lingering concern for the older man. 

“Shut up and let me go!” Bell said, desperation in his voice as he stared at AJ with his red and irritated eyes. He vigorously pulled his hand away from him, nails scraping against AJ’s wrist and drawing blood. Bell didn’t seem to care as he went back to itching, drawing some blood of his own.

AJ immediately noticed the cut. “Shit,” he cussed to himself under his breath. “No, no, no, no, no,” he continually mumbled under his breath, quickly putting pressure on the wound, praying that that could stop it but he already felt his blood beginning to boil. He grabbed a towel off the end of the sink and pushed it harder into the wound but when he looked up at Bell his blood was already floating. His eyes widened, looking at Bell, he didn’t know that Bell had already found out about his “problem”. AJ didn’t want him to know, he didn’t want to burden Bell with that but it was too late now.

Bell looked at his floating blood and cursed, pissed at himself and what he did to AJ. “I’m sorry, AJ, I didn’t mean to cut you. I’ve just been itching all over and stressed since… Well that doesn’t matter, but here let me help you with that. I’ll go grab a bandaid while you try to control that floating blood of yours.” With that, Bell left the OR in search for a band aid while AJ applied pressure on the wound.

As soon as Bell left AJ’s sight, AJ watched as Bell’s floating blood pelted to the floor, leaving large splatters of blood in the hallway. As soon as he was gone AJ released a low, shaky, breath, removing the towel from the cut on his arm for just a second, surly enough in just seconds his blood filled the air above the cut. The cut was small, hardly big enough that it should have been bleeding but it was bleeding a lot, much more than it should have been.

“Shit,” AJ grumbled, slowly, to himself, feeling that same uncomfortable, painful, sensation as before start creeping up on him as he pressed the towel back into the wound.  _ “Damn it,”  _ he thought, cussing repeatedly under his breath.  _ “This wasn’t supposed to happen, not like this, they weren’t supposed to know… he wasn’t supposed to know.”  _ He felt the panic in him rise, trying his best to conceal the ever growing panic and anxiety that was starting to over power him. He walked slowly to the door before looking both ways down the hall, Bell was still gone. Now was his chance, oddly enough he wasn’t sure if he could face the older man. He didn’t want his floating blood to be Bell’s problem, or the hospitals, or anyone’s. But that wasn’t the only thing on his mind as he slipped out the door and down the hall in the direction opposite of the way Bell had gone, holding the towel tightly to his arm and trying to act “like himself” as best he could, but he could feel the cracks starting to form. 

“What’s he doing?” Bell said looking down the hall at AJ walking away from him. He just had gotten back from finding a bandaid and some disinfectant cream, but the person it was for was running away from him. He put the supplies in his pocket then jogged to catch up with AJ.

When AJ heard the footsteps jogging up behind him his immediate reaction was to walk faster but that was no use, Bell was already next to him. “Damn it,” he cussed under his breath, taking a few seconds to formulate an excuse to leave, as if Bell was going to just let him off the hook. “I’m fine,” he grumbled, masking the confident tone of his deep baritone voice, avoiding eye contact with Bell, neither of those things was like him at all. “It’s nothing, just a scratch really.” 

Bell nodded slowly, picking up on his nervousness almost instantly. “You don’t have to walk so damn fast you know? If we can just stop then I can help you out. I brought bandaids and some cream, so just let me help you out. I don’t know what the big fuss is, AJ. Do you think I’m going to hurt you or something? I’m not that dangerous you know,” Bell said, a soft smile on his face as he looked at AJ.

AJ seemed unenthused by the comment, which again, was very unlike him. “I don’t need your help,” AJ grumbled, his eyes flickering up to meet Bells before looking back at the ground. “There is no “big fuss” about anything, dawg. You are the one making a fuss. I know you're not dangerous… that’s not what I’m afraid of.” He mumbled, his voice trailing off as he finished what he was saying, he turned and started to walk off again. 

“I know your blood floats, AJ, so if that’s what you’re afraid of, then you don’t have to be anymore.” Bell held his head down, not bothering to catch up to AJ. “I saw it the night Chastain caught on fire. You were too delirious to remember.”

Aj stopped for a second as he was walking, not turning back, keeping his back to bell, his hand gripping the towel that was pressed against his forearm just a little tighter. “I’m not afraid of anything, Randolph.” He said, his voice suddenly clear and unwavering. Not once did he move as he said it, not turning to face Bell, not a single fidget. He stood there for a second after the words left his mouth, not moving, not saying anything else. After a few seconds he just continued walking down the hall, as if he hadn’t said a thing.

“Then why are you walking away from me?” Bell looked up and AJ could feel Bell's eyes burning into the back of his head. “Why don’t you let me help you? I don’t get it, AJ.” Bell began to walk, following AJ at a distance. “Why won’t you talk to me? It’s okay to be afraid of your floating blood thing, I know it scared me when I first saw it, but I’m not afraid anymore. Just talk to me, AJ.” Bell began to itch at his arms as he followed AJ, but he paid no attention to it.

“I’m walking away from you because I have places to be, I won’t let you help me because I don’t need your help. And I'm not talking to you because you’re not my shrink.” AJs breaths got shorter as Bell got closer, trying to conceal the pain that was filling his body, as it became worse and worse. It was much more excruciating then it had been any of the other times it had happened. He felt the hand that he had clenched against the cut on his arm begin to become wet with blood, the small cut on his arm turning the blue OR towel almost completely red now, dripping blood which stopped abruptly before hitting the ground. “Damnit,” AJ cuseed to himself before quickly moving to the door of the nearest empty OR and going in. The pain was excruciating now, and only getting worse as more blood escaped the small cut. 

Bell quickly followed him into the OR, not letting him get away that easily. “Okay, what the hell is wrong with you? I’m just trying to help you, and you’re being an ass! Come on, AJ, be straight with me here, why won’t you just let me help?! I’m doing this because you’re my friend and I care about you, AJ!” Bell was growing angry at AJ’s stubbornness, and he was beginning to itch deeper into his skin, drawing some blood, but not caring.

“I told you I don’t need your help!” AJ snapped back at Bell the second he walked into the OR. “There is nothing wrong with me, if there’s something wrong with anyone it’s you! You look like hell and you've been acting strange ever since the fire happened!” Scratching yourself to death!” AJs voice waved dangerously from upset to angry as he spoke. The more upset he got the more the cut on his arm bleed, the higher Bell's blood floated. “Don’t try to pin this on me, word on the street is that it’s Conrad’s fault the hospital burnt down! I had nothing to do with it!”

Bell stood in shocked silence. He then softly spoke, trying his best not to anger AJ any more than he already was. “AJ, I never thought this was your fault. I wasn’t even thinking about that. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Also don’t make this about me, I’m fine.” Bell slowly took a couple of steps closer, trying to get in closer to AJ, taking the bandaid and cream out of his pockets. “I’ve said this a million times already, but let me help you with that cut of yours.”

When Bell stepped closer AJs pain spiked, he bit his lip to conceal the pained gasp that built up in his throat, clenching the towel on his arm tighter. “You are not fine!” He snapped, stepping back when Bell stepped towards him. “You’re so worried about me, why don’t you look in a mirror, dawg!?” AJ stepped back again. “You look like shit! Why don’t you help yourself and leave me alone!” 

“I’m not the one in pain, idiot!” Bell yelled, throwing the bandaid and cream on the floor. “I have no idea what is up with you right now, but you better fix that attitude and stop being so bitchy!” Bell stepped forward, not caring that AJ was backing away and grabbed him by the arm where the cut was. “Let me take a look and help you, dammit!”

A soft gasp escaped AJs mouth when Bell grabbed his arm, his free hand, which had been holding the bloody towel on his arm, instinctively lifted. The bloody towel dropped to the floor and the blood that had been pooling above Bells cuts as well as dripping from the blood soaked cloth snapped to AJs empty hand, as he closed his hand the blood hardened into a long pole like staff. AJ looked at the object in his hand, in shock, more blood pooling from his wound as the staff got larger. He was so focused on it he hardly began to notice as the dizziness set in. All in a matter of seconds, he had dropped the towel, raised his hand, and the blood had hardened into this staff. 

He stumbled back, dropping the staff and grabbing his stomach as a bust of pain radiated through his body, causing him to groan. As soon as the object fell from his hand and hit the ground it splattered into a large puddle of blood. AJ rested his back against the wall as the pain only grew worse, “What the hell is wrong with me,” he muttered lowly under his breath as he shrank down to the floor, his breaths growing sharper, faster, and more panicked as he did so. 

Bell backed up in shock, until he hit the opposite wall, finally stopping him from backing up. He looked at the pool of blood, then to AJ, his shaky hand moving to the side of his neck where he slowly scratched his neck. “H-holy shit. What the hell was-” Bell stopped his own confusion as he saw AJ in his horrible state of panic. He forced himself to take steps towards AJ, but not going close enough to touch him. He moved into a sitting position and stared at AJ and slowly spoke up. “AJ. Are you alright? Please try to breathe, I don’t want you to pass out.” He wanted to ask him how the hell he made a giant pole out of blood, but that could wait for later after he got AJ under control.

AJ offered no response to Bell’s question, staring at the puddle of blood on the floor as if it was some kind of monster, to him, it was. He was so caught up in his own thoughts he hardly remembered that Bell was in the room with him still. His blood felt like it was boiling in his body, the more panicked he got the more the cut in his arm bleed, but the blood was no longer floating, it dripped down his forearm and finger then just hit the ground, as if it was just as normal as anyone else’s blood. AJ’s body trembled softly as he just sat there on the floor staring at the blood, his eyes fixated on it, his breaths only growing shorter and faster. It was until Bell stepped directly in front of him that he even appeared to notice the older man. AJs eyes instinctively ran up Bell's body, meeting his, he just stared for a second, if Bell didn't know him better he’d say there were tears in the panicked man's eyes. 

AJ just seemed to stare for hours, blood dripping from his arm, both him and Bells blood hitting the floor now. AJs eyes flickered back to the ground before he spoke. “I-I’m sorry,” he practically whispered at Bell’s feet, his voice shaky and uneven, his breaths short and panicked. It was as if every fragment of the man that Bell felt like he knew so well was completely gone.

“Don’t be sorry, AJ, just let me help you,” Bell said, holding out his hand and slowly moving it towards AJ’s arm. “May I please help you? Then I’ll leave you alone if you want me to.”

AJ pulled his arm away briefly but eventually slowly held it out to Bell, watching the blood drip off of it instead of floating. He took a long shaky breath, starting to calm down, turning his head away from Bell and slightly nodding his head but not offering a word in response to the older man.

Bell smiled and took his arm gently, and grabbed the bandaids and cream. He grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser and wiped it off gently. He then applied the cream, then covered it up with a bandaid. After he finished helping AJ out he sat back and sighed at his well done work with a soft smile on his face, scratching his shoulder at the same time. “There. Hopefully that’ll heal fairly quickly.”

Well Bell finished AJ had mostly calmed down, but the man was still clearly far from himself. As Bell had worked the pain had faded from AJs body but he was still deep in his thoughts. When Bell finished AJ slowly pulled his arm away joining it with his other arm which was wrapped around his knees. He kept his head turned away from Bell, “Thank you,” he mumbled after a moment of saying nothing at all but he did not move, or make any attempt to get up off of the floor. 

“No problem,” Bell said with a smile. He then stood up and threw away the bandaid wrapper and paper towels, and grabbed the disinfectant spray and extra paper towels then got to work on cleaning the floors, not asking AJ for help, because he wanted him to rest. After he cleaned up a good majority of the blood, he looked at AJ who was still on the floor in a trance. He wanted AJ to relax, and he didn’t want to be a bother to him right now, and he already probably annoyed him enough today. He started to walk out of the OR, leaving AJ to himself.

AJ stayed quiet the entire time Bell cleaned up, his arms hugged loosely around his legs, he wasn’t himself at all right now. As Bell cleaned AJ had just stared blankly at the ground, not even seeming to notice when Bell wipes the puddle of blood he had been staring at off the ground. He didn’t move, didn’t speak but when Bell went to walk out of the OR, AJ shifted slightly, tightening his arms around his knees, his head stayed still, his eyes not moving from where they rested on the floor. “Please…” AJ’s voice was low and shaky when he spoke, nothing more than a whisper. “Don’t leave.” Fragments of shame lingered though his voice as the words escaped his mouth he knew Bell had other places to be, that he did as well, but right now he clearly wasn’t going anywhere, and the last thing he wanted to be was alone.

Bell turned around to look at AJ, surprised at his request. “Uh- yeah okay,” Bell said quickly, still taken aback by the comment. “I’ll stay.” He slowly made his way back over and took a seat next to AJ and leaned back against the wall. “I’m surprised you still want me around,” Bell said, chuckling lightly, his hand moving up to his cheek, where he yet again began to itch at the uncomfortable sensation. “I mean, hell, I may have caused you more pain sticking around than if I just let you go.” Bell’s eyes moved to the floor where he put good thought into what he just said. Did he really do more harm than good in this situation? Should he have just let AJ go? He didn’t know for certain.

AJ offered little response to Bell at first a slight shrug, his hands fidgeting with the fabric on his pants as he continued to stare at the floor in front of him. Eventually he spoke up again, long after the two of them had gone silent. “You didn't cause any of this,” he mumbled. “That’s not—“ he paused for a second, clenching the hand he had cut in the OR on the day of the fire into a fist around the fabric of his scrub pants. “That’s not how  _ it _ works.” 

“Pardon? What do you mean, that’s not how it works?” Bell turned his head to face him, eyes locking onto AJ’s, but AJ didn’t return the stare.

AJ still didn’t move his head, but his eyes flickered for only a second over to Bell’s shoes, which was as good as he could get at the older man without moving his head. Either way it didn't matter because his eyes only wavered from the spot on the floor for a split second before returning to it. “I mean it doesn’t work like that. I-I don’t know how it works.”

“You mean to tell me you don’t know how this whole blood stuff works? I don’t mean to be the bearer of bad news, but I don’t know how it works either, but that’s okay. This is a whole new thing that is scary, and new to all of us. I don’t blame you for not knowing what this is, and you shouldn’t blame yourself most of all. Understanding this will come with time and patience and you just have to trust that in the end you will be okay and it will all work out.” Bell removed his hand from his neck where he was scratching and moved it to AJ’s back, trying to comfort him. “And if you need me, at any time, I’m here for you, and I got your back. Never doubt that.”

AJ stayed quiet for what seemed like hours, flinching the slightest when Bell put his hand on his back. The fragment of a smile crossed his face for just a second before it disappeared again. “And what if it doesn’t?” He muttered, his voice sounding suddenly inexplicably sad. “What if I can’t control it? What if— what if I end up like Hawkins? Accidentally hurt someone?” He paused looking up at Bell, locking eyes with him, AJs eyes were glassy and filled with tears that threatened at any second to stream down his face. “What if I accidentally hurt you?” 

Bell shrugged, glancing away for just a moment before reverting his eyes back to AJ’s. “I doubt that’ll happen, AJ, but if it does then I know it’s nothing done on purpose and of course I’ll forgive you. Hopefully you’ll get this under control to where the thought of hurting someone doesn’t even cross your mind.”

“Like you  _ forgave, _ Conrad,” AJ scoffed softly, almost not really meaning to say it outloud. He looked away and sighed softly, “word on the street is you and Conrad got into it after the fire. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together,” he motioned to the scar on Bell’s neck. “I may not remember any of it but I’m smart enough to know you blame him for what happened to the hospital, for all the people that got hurt. I’m no different from him. I didn’t burn down part of the hospital but I am no different from him! I’m just… some kind of freak.” 

Bell's expression dropped into a frown as his hand slowly made its way to the huge scar on his neck. AJ was right. He did, in fact, blame Conrad for burning down the hospital, and he also blamed him for the horrible scar on his neck. “You’re right. I do blame him, but then again, he ran off before we could even really talk about what happened to Chastain. I may also blame him more because he gave me this big scar on my neck.” He found that the more he talked about Conrad the more he realized that he wasn’t helping AJ at all, and probably making it worse. “Look, this isn’t about Conrad, okay? This is about you. I trust that you will figure this out and that you won’t burn down the hospital. I also trust you when I’m around you because I believe you would never hurt me. You’re not Conrad, so stop comparing yourself to his actions and thinking the worst of yourself, okay?”

AJ continued to look at the ground, keeping his head angled away from Bell. “But you do blame him. Which means if I did accidentally hurt you… or anyone, you’d blame me too. I’d blame myself. Conrad ran because he was scared, the same reason I refused to let you help me,” he paused, dropping his head a little. “The only difference is that he hurt you and I didn’t. That’s the only reason you're not blaming me. I’m blaming Hawkins too, whatever the hell is wrong with me he has something to do with it. It can’t be a coincidence that he suddenly can light up like a candle and my blood mysteriously floats on the same day right?” AJ laughed a little to himself, hearing what he was saying come out of his mouth made this whole thing seem stupid but he didn’t stop talking. “If I was him I would run too, hell, I hardly convinced myself to come to work today. On the off chance that some shit like this would happen,” he motioned to the cut on his arm. “I can’t stop thinking the worst of myself, dawg. My blood floats, makes huge fucking blood poles, how the hell am I supposed to explain that to anyone!?” As he spoke his breath began to speed up again.

“I don’t expect you to explain it to anyone. If I had your blood floating thing then I would be confused and scared too, but on the upside… you cut your arm, but you managed to not hurt anyone, and you also kept it under wraps. Also, can we stop talking about Conrad Hawkins for god's sake? Let's just worry about you and how we are going to help you get this under control alright? Screw Conrad for all I care. It’s just me and you right now and I’m going to help you through this, even though I don’t understand it, I’m going to try my best.” Bell nudged AJ supportivley and smiled brightly, trying his best not to vigorously scratch at his arms.

The fragment of a smile crossed AJs face for a second, nudging Bell back and taking a few deep breaths. “Okay, okay,” he said softly. “What are we going to do then?” He looked back up Bell then back down for a second, before meeting the older man’s eyes again. 

“Well, let's not talk about it to anyone who doesn’t know for now, and hopefully it won’t act out again. Try to get through today, then maybe after work we can meet up and try to figure out what this is all about and what’s triggering it to freak out. Maybe just setting your mind to work is what would be best for you. I know it helps me sometimes.” Bell slowly stood up and offered his hand to AJ to take, which he accepted. “If you have any problems for the rest of the day let me know and I’ll be there to help you out, okay? I have to go now, but if you want to talk later I would be more than happy to.”

AJ offered a slight nod and smile, to The older man as he helped him off the floor. “Okay,” AJ nodded, pausing for a second, seeming to have almost reverted back to his normal self now. “And let's agree to not talk about  _ anything  _ that happened. Okay, dawg? What happens in the OR stays in the OR,” his voice fluctuated a little nervously as he said it. He knew he could trust Bell to keep his little panic attack under wraps but he just wanted to hear it from the man himself. 

“Your secret is safe with me, AJ. No need to worry,” Bell said with a reassuring smile on his face. “I’m going to go get myself some coffee and rest a little before my next surgery, so if you need me I’ll be around. I’ll talk to you later,” Bell said while patting AJ on the shoulder. He then turned around and left the OR. The second he left the OR he scratched his arms, finally being able to put his attention on them and the horrible itchy feeling he had. He should probably get himself some help with this so it wouldn’t bother him all day. Then he remembered the cream he had in his pocket that he used for AJ’s cuts. That should help him at least a little bit until he could find a better solution to his issue. He let himself into the nearest OR and started to apply the cream on his arms, neck, and face.

He barely had a chance to finish applying the cream before Kit walked in, a smuggish smile crossing her face as she stood in the doorway and watched for a moment before entering. “Never really figured you were a lotion man, Randolph,” she snickered with a smile before making her way over to him, noticing the blood, there was a lot less of it then there would have been had it not been for AJ but there was still a fair amount. A confused and concerned look crossed her face for a second. “You’re bleeding, Randolph,” she said softly grabbing a towel off the shelf on the back wall and taking the cream from his hands. “Let me help you with that.” 

Bell smiled and let her help him. He didn’t want to be difficult with her, he also needed the break. “I just accidentally cut myself, it’s no biggie really. It’s more I’ve been super itchy all day and it hasn’t gone away, so I’m trying some lotion to stop it.”

“Well, this probably isn’t your safest bet. You should probably let me wrap your arms, just to be safe, especially if you have more patients today. We can’t have you bleeding in the OR,”she snickered, quickly turning and grabbing bandages off the shelf behind her before Bell had a chance to reject the offer. “With everything going on the last few days I’m willing to bet it’s just stress,” she remarked as she began to gently wrap Bell’s arms. “But I recommend you take it easy for a while, Randolph. Just because it was my day off doesn’t mean I didn’t hear all the juicy gossip about the day the fire happened, my OR nurse is a real chatty one,” she joked with a slight smile.

Bell smiled, letting out a soft chuckle at her comment. “I guess you’re right. I have been pretty stressed lately, but I’m glad I have someone like you to help me out when I need it.” He watched her gently work the bandages on his arms which filled him with even more gratitude.

“I’ll always be here if you need me, Randolph. But there’s not much I can do if you have a heart attack in the OR because you’ve been so stressed. Just please, take it easy. No one will blame you for taking a few days off after the hell you’ve been though, even with you and Jude out we still have plenty of great surgeons here to fill the gaps. Plus AJ is back now, so you are okay to take some time off. Even if none of the surgeons left are as grand as you,” she joked with a soft chuckle and a smile, finishing bandaging Bell’s right arm and moving to his left.

Bell stayed silent for a bit before speaking up. “Thank you, for what you’re doing, and also looking out for me. It seems that I’ve just been worrying about other people’s problems, but not my own, but now that you’re here I don’t have to worry anymore.” Bell found himself starting to turn red at the cheeks. He turned away, trying to focus his attention on something else other than Kit, hoping it’ll stop his red cheeks from getting any redder.

Kit smiled as she watched the red invade Bells cheeks. “That’s right,” she chuckled softly. “You can always talk to me, Randolph. I hope you know that, problems, or not I’m here to help with anything that comes your way, and most certainly to look after you, because if I don’t, nobody will,” she made quick work of wrapping his other arm, gently letting it go. “You are all good to go,” she smiled at him. 

“Thank you,” Bell said with a smile, holding up his arms to admire her work. “Great work as always, Kit.” Bell put down his hands and looked at Kit, knowing full well his cheeks were a bright red, but trying his best to ignore it. “You’re a great friend to have, thanks again.”

“You’re welcome, Randolph, bruh there is really no need to thank me.” Her smile grew wider as Bell’s face grew redder. “Anything else you want to get off your chest before your next surgery? You have quite a bit of time since both your and AJ’s next patients got pushed back a few hours. Any particular reason for that?” Kit asked, both teasingly and seriously. She was genuinely curious as to why it was, since Mina, Bell and Nolan were the only ones that knew about AJs floating blood, word hadn’t gotten out about that. Kit has no genuine reason to be suspicious of anything, she was however curious how such a coincidence came to be. 

“I-I’m not sure. I wish I knew, honestly,” Bell said, trying his best to not spill the beans about AJs weird ability. Kit was the one who he knew he could trust with anything he told her, but this thing was his and AJ’s secret, and he couldn’t bring himself to break his promise and tell about his blood floatation episode. “It’s a shame it got pressed back, now I have nothing to do with my time,” Bell shrugged, a small smile forming on his face. “Guess I’ll just have to hang out with you for the time being.”

Kit smiled, a thin layer of blush crossing her face for an instant. “I guess you will,” she snickered with a smile. “Guess you got lucky, I don’t have any surgeries for a while either but I could use a coffee,” she joked, swinging open the OR door for Bell and motioning for him to go first. “Maybe while we walk you can tell me what’s been stressing you so much lately, besides the fire.” 

“Yeah, I’d like that,” he said, walking out and waiting for her so he could walk by her side. “Ever since that stupid fire, I’ve just had an uneasy feeling, and I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s just not right. I’ve been itchy all over, which is different for me since I’ve never gotten itchy while stressed. I just don’t know what’s going on with me. I don’t expect you to know the answers, I just want you to listen because it seems that no one listens to me. I talk to people, but it always ends in them shooing me away or talking about their problems. I like to help them out, but I never get to talk about my issues to anyone.”

Kit nodded a little, “I’m always here to listen to you, Randolph. I don’t have any answers for you but I can tell you that you should stop worrying about it, the more you worry the more you are going to stress. I will never sho you away, Randolph but you need to stop stressing over this. Everyone has been stressed since the fire, even AJ has been acting strange these past few days. The more you stress the harder this is going to be on you.” Kit walked closely to Bell and they walked side by side out of the OR wing of the hospital.

“I know, but it’s hard not to stress if you know what I mean,” he said back, hand moving to the back of his neck where he began to itch again, but not as violently as he did about 20 minutes ago with AJ.

Kit nodded softly in response to Bell's remark, opening her mouth to say something but being cut off by a sudden yelling from around the corner. Naturally, Kit followed the yelling, followed by Bell, around the corner.

“Get your hands off of me!” Conrad yelled, trying to free himself from the hands of three security guards that were trying to drag him down the hall. He looked like hell, a large cut, clearly self-treated, and poorly self-treated at that, lined the left side of his neck, disappearing under the collar of the sweatshirt he had on and moving up his face to under his left eye. His hands were wrapped in red fighter tape, one arms tape tape dripped water off the tips of his fingers onto the floor, the other sides appeared to be frozen. The sleeves of his sweatshirt were pulled up around his elbows, showing off his still badly blistered arms under the fighters tape. 

When he finally got away from the strong grips of the three security guards he was met by a swift punch in the jaw. When he looked up he saw the last person he expected. “AJ?” He said questionably, stumbling back and grabbing the side of his face where AJ had punched him, the punch was actually quite a hard one. AJ hadn’t been there before so Conrad hadn’t been expecting him to be.

“You have no right to be here!” AJ screamed. “Not after the shit you pulled, dawg! Hell no, get the hell out!” AJ stepped closer, pushing Conrad back.

Conrad just stood there for a second, stumbling when AJ pushed him, he hadn’t even noticed Bell or Kit yet, he was just trying wrap his head around why, out of all the people, AJ was the one taking a shot at him after everything that happened.

“Cut it out AJ! What the hell has gotten into you?!” Kit said, stepping between Conrad and AJ. “Conrad are you alright?” Kit said, walking next to Conrad and resting a hand on his back.

Bell was still standing in the same place, frozen as the memories of that night flooded into his head. The night he got the burn, and the night he started this itching problem. He was still mad at Conrad, but he didn’t say a word, nor moved a muscle.

“I’m fine,” Conrad huffed, pushing Kits hand off of him gently. When Kit rested her arm on his shoulder it was quite cold, even though the sweatshirt, but when he pushed her hand off with his opposite arm his hand was quite warm. He moved his hand to the cut that spanned most of his face, sighing softly as he wiped fresh blood from the poorly tended wound. 

“Nothing has “gotten in to me”!” AJ continued, watching the blood from Conrad’s cut carefully as it dripped down his face and hit the floor. “I just think it’s oftly grand that this  _ murderer _ thinks he can just waltz in here after everything he did!” AJ took a step towards Conrad, Conrad took a step back. He really hadn’t come here for a fight, matter of fact he had been hoping to avoid everybody, he was only here for one thing. Or one person, rather.

“It’s a hospital, AJ,” Conrad scoffed, seeming annoyed but clearly trying to keep his nerves in check. “I can be here if I please. I’m not here for any of you, so just get out of my way and I’ll be on my way.” 

AJ shook his head, “No! You don’t get to pretend like you own this place after you damn near burnt it to the ground, dawg! That’s not how this works! After what you did to Jude! To Bell! You’re mighty brave showing your face around here again!!” He moved forward, going to punch Conrad again, Conrad swiftly dodged. 

That’s when it happened. Bell’s body moved, and before he knew what was happening he was stepping between Conrad and AJ. Staring up at the angry surgeon.  _ What the hell am I doing? _ He thought.  _ Why am I protecting Conrad? The man who made my life so miserable?  _ “That’s enough AJ. I think he understands that you’re pissed. I am too, but punching the man in the face, while at work, in front of all these people isn’t the best idea. None of them know why you’re mad anyway. Why draw attention to yourself?” Bell turned his attention to Conrad, glare as cold as ice. “You owe me, Hawkins.” He then turned back to AJ, the cold angry stare gone to be replaced by a gentle stare, a kind stare, a stare pleading him to stop this nonsense.

Conrad just rolled his eyes when Bell looked at him, trying to seem as unenthused about everything that he could even though on the inside he was panicking. He didn’t want to be here any more than they wanted him to be. He was scared like hell that he was going to hurt someone else, especially with this new power he was developing on top of the flames everyone already knew that he had. But he knew that he had to be there, he was there for one reason and one reason only, to see Jude. He owed him that much at least, after all the man did save his life, more than once. 

Devon had called him and told him that Jude was in awful shape. Conrad had been secluding himself for days, trying to figure out what the hell had gotten into him when he wrapped his hand around Bell’s throat, why Jude was the only thing that stopped him. He felt like he was battling himself, and he was losing. Even despite all that, all the dirty looks he knew he was going to get, all of it, he wanted to be there for Jude like he had so often been there for him. That was the only thing he was there for.

When Bell glanced over at AJ, his expression of anger slowly changed to one of regret, his eyes flickering to the bandaged cut on his arm and back to Bell. He knew that Bell was right, that the last thing he needed was to be drawing attention to himself, if something happened with his blood in front of all these people he would end up just as much of an outcast as Conrad was. 

AJ took a step back with a slight sigh, “whatever,” he huffed slightly, it was clear Bell had gotten his point across. His eyes flickered back up to Conrad, “just stay the hell away from me.” He looked back at Bell briefly before stepping back again but he didn’t turn to leave, or appear to have any intention too. Part of him wanted to continue this conversation, even in front of all these people, screaming at Conrad for screwing everything up, for scarring Bell, but the other half was too afraid too. So he stood there, in silence, his gaze flickering from Conrad, to Bell, to the floor.

“This whole argument thing is done for now, okay? So everyone shut up. AJ, go to work, I’ll talk to you later. Conrad, I need to talk to you, and why you’re here.” Bell's tone got more snarky as he went on, getting the snarkiest when he mentioned Conrad’s name. “I won’t provoke you, I just want to know,” he said, turning his back on AJ, not giving a damn where he went, just as long as he stayed out of it.

AJ scoffed something crude under his breath and stood there for another second before walking back around the corner and stopping out of sight. He wanted to stay there, he wanted to keep Conrad in his sights, because the last time he didn’t the man almost killed Bell.

Conrad huffed a little, hearing the snarkiness in Bell’s speech, looking Bell right in the face. When Conrad returned his gaze Bell could see that there was a bit of blue strung in with the hazel of his eyes. He had a bad feeling suddenly, all of this was becoming a bit too much, as Bell got closer to him he felt his body getting both colder and warmer, he bit the inside of his lip to conceal it. “What the hell do you want?” He said as unenthusiastic as he could. “Look, 

I didn’t come to talk to you, or AJ, any of you so whatever it is, just make it quick.”

“Easy with the tongue, Conrad. I just want to know why the hell you ran away that’s all. I don’t want to start another fire, so I’m trying not to piss you off, but I just have to know why. We should’ve just talked this all over instead of… you know,” Bells hand moved up to his neck and he looks away as he does, but then quickly moves them back to Conrad’s. “Just tell me what happened to you.”

Bell was uneasy inside, hell he felt worse than that. Though he talked calmly, he was afraid because he knew that he could potentially gain another scar just by aggravating the man. He knew he had to conceal his fear, and act like the bigger man here. He knew that there was no use in fighting this one out (though he wanted to), so he had to talk in order to get himself an explanation.

Conrad’s eyes flickered to the floor for a second, a slight sigh escaping his tightly clenched jaw. This was exactly what he had been fearing all along, this was the last thing he wanted to talk about right now. He knew it would come up eventually but he had no idea what to say, he had spent the last few days trying to figure out what the hell had gotten into him and he still hadn’t the vaguest idea, he wished he did but he had nothing. 

He stood in complete silence for a second, staring at the ground, he had nothing  _ to  _ say. “I ran because—“ He started and back tracked, every fiber of his being was telling to play it off, use some sly remark to dodge the question but the words that came out of his mouth he had little to no control over. “I don’t know,” the words left his mouth as hardly a mumble. “I don’t know,” he repeated, flickering his eyes up to Bell. “Because I burnt down the hospital, because I almost killed you, because I— I hurt Jude… because I’m turning into some cold blooded killing machine, because there’s nothing to talk about.” He sighed, eyes moving back to the ground, slowly the hazel in them was chilling to a light, cold blue. “Because there’s nothing to talk about,” he repeated, this time quieter. “I can’t control it, therefore I’m a danger to myself and others, therefore I ran. Is that good enough for you?” His eyes flickered back to Bell, now completely washed and taken over by a deep blue. The bandages on his hand that had been dripping water abruptly stopped, a thin layer of frost forming on them.

Bell just stared at him, speechless. He wasn’t expecting Conrad to actually open up, he was expecting him to just push him away, but instead he actually told him that he felt like an actual threat to everyone, even him. He had no idea what to say, so he just stepped back, nodded and showed him through. In Bells opinion, that went a lot smoother than he ever expected.

Conrad moved past Bell, careful not to so much as graze him, the bottoms of his shoes left thin frosty footprints on the ground as he walked. He tucked his hands, along with the frosty bandages on them, under his arms cussing under his breath.

An alarm began to go off down the hall, Conrad continued walking, faster, he immediately felt that something was off. 

“We need a crash cart in room 201!” He heard a voice scream from down the hall. He felt his heart drop, his blood run cold, partly in a literal way as patches of thick ice grew under his feet. That was Jude’s room. 201 was Jude’s room. “Jude,” he mumbled, frozen in place for a second. “Jude!” He screamed, bolting down the hall as fast as his legs could carry him, slipping on the ice that accumulated under his own feet as he ran but swiftly getting back up and continuing, as fast as he could. 

Bell and Kit followed Conrad as they ran to Jude’s room. They ran into his room to find a coding Jude and a freaked out Conrad, frantically trying to help him. Bell quickly motioned for Kit to help Jude, then walked over to Conrad and stopped him from pacing frantically. “Conrad, you have to stand down on this one, let me and Kit handle this, okay? It’s not safe for you or him if you help, and you know what I mean.” Bell motioned to the burn on his neck. “We don’t want this to happen to him do we?”

Conrad looked terrified, it was a look that Bell had certainly never seen in his face, sheer terror mixed with guilt and shame. “I—” Conrad tried to speak but all his words died up before they even left his mouth. He wanted to say he would never hurt Jude, that he cared about him, but he couldn’t. He had hurt him and then he ran and now Jude could die, not knowing why he ran, die because of him, because Conrad hadn’t been there to take care of him like Jude had been for him all those times before. The longer he stood there the further the ice patch under his feet expanded, the blood from the cut on his face that AJ had reopened froze to his face. He was shivering, his face completely void of color, staring at Jude on the bed as Kit and a few nurses trying to save him. He pushed Bell back, his hand nearly frostbit Bell’s bare skin even though it only touched him for a second. 

Conrad took a step closer to the bed but not daring to get too close, he knew Bell was right. “I-I need him,” he mumbled, barely audible over all the chaos, it was the last thing he expected to come out of his mouth, he didn’t even mean to say it out loud but in the moment he didn’t care.

Bell shivered at the touch of Conrad’s hand, but shook it off as he stepped in and began to help out Kit and the nurses as they tried to bring the struggling Jude back to good health. 

As they helped him out, Bell began to itch at the bandages around his arms, subconsciously tearing the bandage away to get to the itchy skin. It seemed the more he panicked the more his skin itched. He couldn’t let Jude die. For the sake of the hospital and Conrad, he had to save him.

Kit looked up at Bell from the other side of the bed, concern painted across her face, not only for Bell, scratching at his arms, but for Jude. Her eyes flickered up to Conrad, who was quite frankly a mess, he was pacing, at this point it was more like gliding, across the ice under his feet, chewing anxiously on his finger, mumbling to himself, frantically snapping his head up to look up at Jude every once in a while. 

Kit looked back at Bell, she said nothing but the looks he gave him said it all.  _ “We have to pull this off.”  _ But with each passing second everyone in the room knew that Jude’s chances were getting slimmer and slimmer. 

“No! I will not let him die!” Bell yelled, instead of trying to communicate through eye contact. “I won’t! I won’t allow it!” He yelled again as he continued to work on the dying Jude. He was frantic, afraid almost as he yelled. Bell knew deep inside that Jude’s death could be the end of them all due to the fact that Conrad could light the whole hospital on fire again. Saving Jude was life or death for all of them, and Bell was the only one who knew that. He had to try his hardest and do whatever he could to save Jude.

Kit could hear the panic in Bell's voice, she wasn’t there the day that the fire had happened but she knew that Bell had every right to be afraid. She had heard a hundred different stories about what had happened that day, although right now it didn’t seem like Conrad was going to be settling anything on fire. He shivered, ice and frost coated his arms and the tips of his hair, he slid back and forth on the patch of ice under his feet, the finger he had been anxiously chewing on now dripped blood onto it.

“We can do this,” Kit said softly, leaning in over the bed and looking up at the panicked Bell that stood before her although she wasn’t sure which one of them she was trying to convince. As if things could get any worse, they heard the ever so terrifying vague beeping in the background stop. Conrad stopped pacing immediately, he felt his heart drop, frozen in place. 

“We lost his heartbeat!” One of the nurses in the background screamed, grabbing the defibrillator and moving towards Jude. 

Kit reached and grabbed Bell's hand over the bed, eyes flickering up to Conrad, then back to Bell, to the flatlining Jude laid out lifelessly on the bed. To say she looked concerned would be an understatement she was just praying this worked. 

The nurse put the defibrillator under Jude’s shirt and warned everyone to step back before she screamed clear. The second the defibrillator went off there was a spark of light followed by an exploding sound as the lights went out. The nurse went flying back and hit the wall, then laid motionless on the floor, eyes wide open in a state of shock and fear.

Bell stumbled back a bit and grabbed Kits hand in the process, making sure to not let go out of fear of losing her to the darkness that filled the room. “What the hell just happened?” He muttered, his voice being the only thing to fill the room, the sounds of the flatline no longer going off due to the sudden outage.

Kit looked over at Bell squeezing his hand, she wanted to respond to his question but in the chaos it simply slipped her mind. Everything went down in a matter of seconds, the nurse shocked Jude and went flying back, that spark must have short circuited the entire grid because the whole hospital was suddenly pitch black. It also appeared to have killed the nurse that had shocked him. The room fell completely silent for a second, no one moved, no one touched Jude. 

Conrad watched from behind all of them frozen, eyes wide, mouth open. He closed his hands into fists, clenching them so tightly they were at risk of slicing through the bandages wrapped around them. His eyes were suddenly so light blue they practically glowed in the near pitch black of the room. 

“Why aren't you doing anything?! Why aren't you helping him!?” Conrad screamed, the terror and sadness overwhelming any small traces of anger that may have lurked in his voice. He felt tears beginning to fill his eyes, he knew deep down that that shock must have killed Jude, it had to of, right? But if Jude was dead, then it was his fault. Then he killed his own best friend, he wasn’t going to accept that, not now, not after everything they had been through together. 

Ice was beginning to form all around his body, on his body, making its way up his arms as well as from the patch of ice on the floor up his legs. His whole body was shaking, he bit down, hard, on his lip to silence the sobs that were trapped in his throat. When the emergency lights powered by the generator finally turned on, there was just enough light that made its way into the room through the door and windows to reflect off the tears that poured down Conrad’s face but not enough to really see anything clearly. 

“Save him, damn it!” Conrad screamed, clenching his fists harder, ice growing faster up his body. “Do something!!!” As soon as he was done speaking he immediately clenched his jaw back down on his lip, hard enough to draw blood this time, hardly able to hold back the sobs any longer.

Bell and Kit stood in shock, unable to move or speak, still clearly trying to wrap their heads around what just happened. Bell and Kit also knew that this was it, there was no saving Jude on this one. He was gone, and they didn’t need a monitor to tell them that. “Th-the shock to his body would’ve killed him, Conrad, he’s- he’s gone,” Bell muttered, knowing full well that he could be dead in the next couple of minutes. He looked down, trying to hold back the fear that clung to him. “Conrad, I’m sorry.”

Conrad shook his head, “No! No! He’s not dead! He’s not!” He stomped his foot, the stomp sending large mounds of ice across the room, shattering the glass behind him and the glass in the window on the opposite side of the room but it didn’t touch a single one of them. The ice moved under Jude’s bed and came within centimeters of Kit, Bell, and each of the nurses but didn’t so much as graze a single one of them, that was too close to just be good luck, that seemed more like good aim. After the burst of ice Conrad stopped for a second, looking down at his hands, covered in ice, then to the ice that now covered the room, then to his left hand. The one that started it all, the one that burnt Jude, the one that set the hospital on fire, the one that nearly killed Bell, and now the one that had killed Jude.

He stood in silence for a second, staring down at his left hand. He knew Bell was right, he knew Jude was dead, and he knew that it was his fault. He felt a soft sob push its way through his teeth, after the first he didn’t bother hiding the others that followed, he figured that didn’t pity him anyway. He deserved this, he was turning into a monster and everyone he loved was paying the price. 

He felt his body shake with each sob that left his throat, he could hardly breathe through each of them. He knew there were still people in the room, by then all of the nurses and people that had been helping to try and save Jude had made a break for it, but Kit and Bell still stood there in front of him, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. This was his fault, his luck, the only person that died as a result of the fire that he started was the one person he had left that he  _ really _ cared about. 

“He’s dead,” Conrad practically whispered, barely audible through his sobs and the gasps for air between them. “I-I killed him.” The words hardly even left his mouth, coming out as a soft whimper, hardly anything more than him simply moving his lips but that didn’t make it hurt him any less. He knew it was true, but to hear it from his own mouth made it  _ real _ to him. 

Kit stared, unable to find anything to say. She was so confused with all the ice and black out she couldn’t even comprehend Conrad’s sobs.

“This is not your fault,” Bell said, looking up at the sobbing man. “I know you don’t listen to me normally, but you have to listen when I say you did  _ not  _ kill him.” Bell’s eyes shifted to Jude’s limp body, barely visible in the darkness. He looked away and shifted his eyes down to the floor.

“Yes I did!!” Conrad screamed, the ice around the room shattering when he did, causing Kit to jump a little. “I killed him and I don’t need your god damned pity because I damn near killed you too!” He tried to take a deep breath through his sobs, it hardly did anything but make it worse though. His whole body was coated in a layer of frost now, shaking, sobbing, the cut on his chest and moving up his neck was dripping blood which mixed with his tears and hit the ground. 

“I-I killed him,” his voice was small and tearful now. “I-I killed him, and-and I-I killed—” His voice cut out suddenly, his whole body shuttering with a sob, “an-and I-I killed, N-Nic.” His voice shaked and shuttered so badly he could hardly say her name. He didn’t even know why he was telling Bell all of this to begin with, he knew he older man probably didn’t care, that he was probably only trying to make him feel better to make sure he didn’t do something like set the hospital on fire but in the moment he had little to no control over anything that he was saying or doing. 

“Nic’s dead?” Bell said quietly, both Kit and himself in a state of shock over what they just heard. Bell knew that talking about Nic could put Conrad over the edge and could lead to his death, but he had no idea what to change the subject to.

Kit, whose hand was still in Bells gave his hand a soft squeeze, hinting that he say nothing and let Conrad just rant, and try not to get in the way.

Bell gave a light squeeze back, approving of her message and staying quiet.

Conrad stood there for a moment, biting back down on his lip as if Bell’s question had somehow sobered him up, only slightly of course because he was still a mess. “She—” he stumbled over his words, clearly not ready to talk about this yet, they didn’t know it but the wound was still fresh, the furthest it could have happened was after the hospital fire three days ago but it was fresher than even that. His left hand moved, subconsciously to the cut that moved up the left side of his face and his neck. “I—” he mumbled, trying again to speak but getting nothing out. He mumbled a few things incoherently to himself before offering only a nod in response to Bell's question, biting his lip harder to fend off the flashbacks that were flooding into his mind. 

He took a second to try and collect himself again before taking a slight step forward, towards Jude. Even now that he was dead, Conrad was still clearly terrifying of hurting him. It was as if the old Conrad Hawkins had been completely stripped of everything that made him  _ the Conrad Hawkins _ and had been entirely rebuilt. Knowing now that Nic was dead could certainly fill in at least a few of those blanks for them but it was a bit strange that Nic was supposedly dead and this was the first they’d heard of it. 

“He was all I had left,” Conrad bit his lip to conceal another sob, speaking more to himself than anyone else there, not meaning really to say it out loud. He reached out and ever so cautiously over the bed and grabbed Judes limp, lifeless, hand, letting out one last soft sob and dropping his head. 

Bell walked up next to Conrad, releasing his hand from Kits to move to Conrad’s back, trying his best to soothe him. “I’m sorry, I really am. You don’t deserve this.” 

Kit tapped Bell on the shoulder, grabbing his attention. She motioned with her head that they leave the room and give Conrad some time alone.

Bell didn’t want to leave his side if he was truthfully honest. He knew what it felt like to lose someone so close, and being alone, to Bell, seemed like the worst possible thing to do, but he went against his judgement and followed Kit out the door, taking one last glance back at Conrad, then leaving the room.

Conrad didn’t say another word, he didn’t even move until he was certain they were out of the room. As soon as they were he released his lip, allowing all of the previously muted and damped sobs to fill the now empty room. They weren’t muted much more than they had been before considering that the glass wall on one side of the room was broken as well as the window was broken on the other but it made him feel a little better that he could at least have his breakdown in peace. He squeezed Jude’s hand as if he was expecting him to squeeze back. He buried his head in Jude’s chest to dampen sobs once again, letting go of Jude’s hand and tightly wrapping his arms around him. He didn’t give so much as a second thought or a look around before climbing into the small bed next to the taller man and hugging him as tightly as he could, curling up against Jude’s chest, pulling the blankets over both of them and just allowing himself to sob. 

Outside of the room, Kit and Bell saw AJ, just leaning on the wall outside of the doorway, not in a position that any of them would’ve been able to see him. He sighed a little, holding a file with Jude’s name on it in one hand, the other jingling anxiously in his pocket. “I guess I’m a little too late,” he said, trying to play it off as a joke or sarcasm but when the words left his mouth it was clear that he felt just as bad for Conrad as all the rest of them did even after everything he had said to Bell in the or earlier that day.

“Poor kid. To lose two people you love in only a short amount of time. It’s killing him,” Bell said, his mind elsewhere, perhaps replaying a distant memory. “I know how he feels. I lost my parents when I was about his age,” Bell said, voice wavering at the end as if he was about to cry out of empathy for Conrad.

Kit leaned against the wall, trying to comprehend all that’s happening, but failed to even understand the start of it. “We need to talk Randolph, there’s a lot I don’t know and a lot you know. I need to get caught up so I understand this whole thing, and I won’t let you get out of it. I need to understand how two people I know and think of as friends are dead in less than 3 days, and how Conrad can shoot ice out of his body and almost kill us.”

Bell looked at her and nodded. It was unfair to keep all this from her, but there was no changing the past. All he could do is tell her now and hope that he can sum it all up fairly quickly. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything,” He said, then moved his eyes to meet AJ’s. “Can I share about your blood manipulation thing?” He wasn’t going to break his promise to AJ unless he had his permission, he wanted AJ to know that he could trust him, and rely on him.

AJ’s eyes flickered almost immediately to the ground when Bell asked the question, he shook his head slightly, saying nothing for a second. His eyes naturally wandered up to see Conrad through the open door of the room, clenching Jude’s lifeless body in his arms and sobbing so hard he could barely breathe. When he realized that he was staring, rather rudely at Conrad, his eyes flickered to Kit and eventually back to Bell. He trusted Bell, he hardly ever trusted anyone but he trusted Bell, and if Bell trusted Kit enough to tell her then AJ trusted her enough to know. 

AJ nodded softly, with two of his colleagues, dare he say his friends, dead in three days, the last thing he wanted was for anyone to be left in the dark on what they were facing exactly. Even though he hated the idea of it all he knew everyone was going to have to be brought up to speed on things around here. 

Bell nodded back, a soft smile forming on his face. “Thank you,” he said softly and kindly. “We should leave Conrad to himself, as much as I hate to, I know we can comfort him later. Come on, let’s find a room where we can talk about all of this,” then began to walk down the hall, Kit not far behind, leaving AJ to stand outside Jude’s room. Bell took one more glance back at AJ and gave another warm smile with a nod, thanking him again for the trust he put in him.

AJ smiled softly back at Bell as him and Kit disappeared down the hall, as soon as they were gone he shifted his attention to Conrad. He gave one more glance into the room before shutting the door gently, careful not to startle Conrad who lay, grieving and sobbing inside. He then took it upon himself to grab some thick blankets, pinning them up to replace broken windows, they dampened the sobs coming from the room and gave Conrad the privacy he deserved. 

After pinning up the blankets, AJ left to see what else he could do to help after a so called power surge had killed the entire hospital grid. He left Conrad alone to grieve, as did everybody else, only frowning when they heard an occasional dampened sob come from the room as they walked by.    



	3. Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In an unexpected turn of events, yet another life is lost. One life, however, may not be as lost as they first anticipated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing to note on this chap :) Hope you enjoy!
> 
> ~Red and Snuf

Bell led Kit through the darkened hall, trying to find an empty room where he could chat with her and catch her up on all this chaos. He opened up one of the doors to find it empty, just what they needed. “Okay, here’s a room,” Bell said, stepping inside. “Take a seat, and I’ll catch you up on everything, I promise.”

He then began to catch her up on all that’s happened, from the burn on his neck, to AJ’s blood manipulation, all of it.

Kit stood in awe, listening to him speak, hardly comprehending a single word leaving his mouth this all seen like make believe to her, and if she hadn’t seen Conrad nearly freeze all of them she wasn’t sure that she would believe any of it. 

“So…” she said slowly, when Bell stopped talking for a moment. “You’re telling me that AJ’s blood floats, Conrad can both set on fire and freeze, and Mina magically healed you with a touch of her hand?” she chuckled a little, in more of a delusional way then anything else. “You realize how this all sounds don't you, Randolph?”

“I know, I know, it sounds crazy and stupid all at the same time, but I would never lie to you. I’ve seen it all with my two eyes, and hell, I don’t even know if I believe it myself. This could all be some stupid dream,” he said, putting his head in one hand and rubbing his eyes with his other. “I really don’t know what to think of it all. I’m barely holding together myself here.”

“Randoplh,” Kit said softly, her voice warm and humble. As soon as she noticed the shift in Bell’s tone she forgot all about her own worries. “We can’t worry about any of that right now. I know it all seems insane but we know that this is real, because we’ve seen it first hand. You have seen it, Randolph. If this was a dream it would be going a lot better. We can figure this out, you, me, AJ, Devon, anyone we can get to help. Jude and Conrad were the only ones on ground zero when the fire happened, Judes gone and it’s looking like Conrad isn't going to be talking to anyone about anything for a  _ long  _ while, so we can’t count on either of them, or even Nic, but that doesn’t mean we can’t figure this out.” She reached out and gently grabbed Bell’s hands, “we can do anything together, right?”

Bell smiled and chuckled a little, relieved that he had someone to talk to and someone that actually cared about him. “Yeah, we can do anything together.” He leaned back in his chair, and that’s when he felt it, the stone in his back pocket. He totally forgot about it, and he didn’t tell Kit about his run in with that strange man, he might as well now. “I should also tell you that there was this guy I ran into this morning, but I got so caught up with Jude’s passing that I totally forgot about it,” he said, taking the stone out of his pocket. “He gave me this stone, and I don’t know what it does.” He held it in front of her, turning it over and over in his hand.

Kit watched Bell remove the stone from his pocket, tilting her head curiously as she observed the eerie blue glow coming off of the strange rock. “Well, Randolph,” she started, pausing for a second, feeling a strange shift in her own breathing, she quickly dismissed it. “I would be careful with it. Typically strange men on the street don’t give out glowing rocks to strangers,” she joked, with a soft smile, flickering her eyes from the stone up to Bell.

“I guess you’re right,” he said, placing the stone on the table. “I’m just curious as to why he would give this to me. What is it? What does it do?” After looking at it for a while, he reached forward to grab it, but as he was grabbing it, it fumbled out of his hand and back onto the table, rolling towards the edge. “Whoops, shit!” He reached forward again, fingers brushing the side of the stone and sending it off the table. Bell's eyes widened and he froze as he heard a crack and multiple pieces hitting the floor.

Kit watched the stone hit the ground, at first nothing happened, she just smiled. “So clumsy, Randolph.” She giggled, moving to pick up the pieces but as she moved closer she felt her breath spike. All of the sudden it felt virtually to draw air into her lungs, feeling like needles were piercing them from the inside out. She nearly fell, bracing herself on the table. “Ra-Randolph?” She whimpered barely audible through her dry, pained, useless, gasps for air. 

“Kit?!” Bell said, quickly getting up and going to her side, putting his hand on her back and arm, trying to brace her and keep her upright. “I need some help here!!!” Bell screamed out, hoping that someone would hear. “Kit talk to me. What’s happening?!” He was panicking and it showed in his voice.

Kit moved her mouth in an attempt to answer Bell’s question but nothing came out. She shifted, putting most of her weight on Bell, trying to breathe, trying to speak to him, trying to do anything, but with each passing second it was getting harder and harder to do anything. “I-it hu-hurts, Ran-Randolph,” the words barely made it out of her mouth, jumbling and getting lost in her increasingly desperate gasps for air as the color began to drain from her face. 

Bell quickly moved her to the floor and put her head in his lap, frantically trying to diagnose her deadly issue. “Heart attack. Heart attack! Somebody get a defibrillator! Anyone! Someone help!” Bell screamed, as he checked her pulse and found a very weak one. “No, no, no! Someone help!” He screamed again, voice cracking as tears began to form in his eyes. “Hold on Kit! Please! Helps coming! Just hold on!” He said frantically, trying to convince himself that help was coming.  _ Why is no one coming?!  _ He thought. If he left her he couldn’t perform CPR if she coded. He had to stay. “Fuck!” He screamed in anger as no one showed up. “Someone please! Anyone!”

Kit watched the surgeon in a panic above her, wanting to do something, anything, but instead she only felt her thoughts getting slower, the stabbing in her lungs numbing, the edges of her vision closing in a dark vignette. She knew then that she wasn’t going to make it off that floor, that no amount of CPR or help in the world was going to change that. She only hoped that Bell would make it, without her, without the only person he felt he could confide in. 

She weakly reached up and grabbed Bell’s wrist, it took nearly all the strength she had left to draw his frantically moving hand, trying to do anything he could to save her, towards her chest. She took a large gasp for air before she made any attempt to speak, her mouth moved but what came out was virtually impossible to decipher, a jumbled mess, barely audible anyway in the chaos but it was all she could muster. Bell felt her hand go limp around his wrist, falling and hitting the shattered remnants of the strange stone on the ground, her head rolled back and her eyes slowly shut. Bell needed no monitor, no pulse check, to know it. She was gone.

That wasn’t going to stop him from trying to revive her. Giving up on her was not an option. She never gave up on him, so why give up on her. “Stay with me!” He yelled as he began to perform CPR, trying his best to revive her lifeless form. He couldn’t even see through the tears that began to fall from his face and onto Kits scrubs. He knew she was gone, yet he still continued to ram his hands into her chest, arms burning as sweat began to form on his brow. After what seemed like hours, Bell finally stopped, falling backwards, tears streaming down his face as he started at her lifeless form. Bell continued to stare at her, unable to move, breathing shakily. He couldn’t save her. After all she did for him, he couldn’t save her. He would never see her happy smile again, or know what it feels like to be recognized or cared for. He would never have that someone by his side who always knew what was on his mind. 

“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” Bell muttered, as he ran his hand through his hair, not even noticing as he pulled at the roots. “I’m so sorry, please forgive me, oh god, I’m so sorry, Kit,” he muttered over and over, not knowing what else to do. He slowly inched forward until he was right next to her body. He grabbed her lifeless hand with his shaky one and held it tight, trying to preserve the warmth that remained. “I’m so sorry, this is all my fault. If I would’ve just ran and got a defibrillator or if I just went and got help! If I tried harder you would be here!” Bell was hysterical, unable to control himself, and continuing to mutter his apologies to Kit, feeling more lost than ever before, her warm happy reassuring presence now faded to nothing, and was replaced by an empty space in Bell's heart. 

He leaned his head on her chest and began to sob quietly. He had no idea why he was crying quietly, no one would hear him scream, just like no one heard him scream a couple of minutes ago. He gripped at her hand tighter, feeling the warmth fading away by the second. He had to keep a hold of her hand, he had to feel the last dose of what it felt like to be safe, because after this, there was no safety net to catch him, it was just him, all alone.

After what seemed like hours to him, but was really only a few minutes he heard a noise in the hall, a single pair of footsteps going door to door, opening each then walking to the next. The footsteps had a rhythm to them, a quick and determined rhythm. It wasn’t long after the footsteps began that AJ swung open the door to the room, an overwhelming sigh of relief filling his lungs when he saw Bell but never making it past his throat as his eyes flickered to Kit. 

“My god,” he murmured, his eyes widening. The words barely left his mouth, the sudden feeling of breathlessness that overtook him in that moment nearly knocking him off his feet. He could tell with a single glance that she was dead, that was two people he respected, although he would never admit it, dead what seems like only minutes apart. That, however, was the last thing on his mind currently, he knew he couldn’t save either Jude or Kit, but he could save Bell. He practically ran to the other side of Kits body, sliding onto his knees and gently removing Bell’s hands from Kits and squeezing them gently in his own.

“Come on. Let’s get you out of here,” his voice was smoother, gentler, kinder, then usual, quieter too. Normally if he were to say anything like that he would have added a dawg, bro, dude, or something along those lines, but there was nothing normal about this. In fact, it was quite the opposite but nonetheless, all he cared about in the moment was helping Bell.

“N-no,” Bell said softly, voice shaking as he yanked his hands out of AJ’s and went back to grab Kit’s cold ones. “I can’t leave her, I need her,” Bell's eyes were glazed over and foggy, unable to fully comprehend the situation. Her loss tore him in two, and it showed. AJ had never seen the man so broken before, it hurt to see him this destroyed.

“You can’t stay here,” AJ said softly, slipping his hand this time over the older man’s shoulder. His voice was smooth and calm but his movements were quite sloppy and tense. He had never been a people’s person in the slightest, everyone knew that, and certainly not someone who had any idea how to deal with Bell, so broken, and vulnerable. That was the real reason why he stood outside of the room and listened to Conrad sob, why he pinned up the blankets, because he would rather avoid situations like this then be caught in them but Bell was different, this was different. Bell had dropped everything to help him in the or earlier that day, postponing their surgeries, helping him clean his wound and cleaning up the blood even after AJ had relentlessly tried to push him away. It was least he could do to do the same for Bell which he did for him, to help him, no matter how hard Bell pushed or shoved, he promised himself in that moment that he would stay by Bell’s side. 

“Stop! Don’t touch me! Please!” Bell sobbed, smacking AJ’s hand away from him and collapsing on Kit, giving up on keeping her hand warm and just hugging her, he couldn’t let her go, not yet. Even though her body was cold, he made himself believe there was still warmth in her skin, and he needed to preserve that.

“You can not stay here, Bell,” remnants of a panicked demand lined AJs voice as he spoke, as he moved to Bell's side. He knew that Bell was probably too blinded by grief to realize, the longer he stayed there the worse he was going to feel about everything and no matter what Bell said, AJ wasn’t going to let that happen. He grabbed Bell’s arm this time, his touch still gentle and kind but lined with tenseness. 

“Come on, the longer you stay here the worse it’s going to get.” He gently pulled on Bell’s arm, pulling him away from Kits lifeless body slightly. “You need to let her go, Bell. She’s gone and the last thing she would want would be to drag you down with her.” 

“Let me go!” Bell screamed as he grabbed AJ’s hand that was on him, nails digging into AJ’s skin. Bell was fighting him, but weakly. He barely had any energy to cry anymore, let alone fight a man who was way stronger than him, but he wasn’t going to let AJ take him away from Kit. He wasn’t going away without a fight. He punched AJ in the arm, almost missing, but still putting enough power into it to hurt. “AJ, please!” He yelled, continuing to punch his arm, looking at Kit every other second to make sure she didn’t wake up miraculously.

AJ winced a little at each punch, carefully making sure Bell hadn’t caused him to bleed, because after what had happened in the OR that morning he was more afraid then ever of hurting someone but he would never admit to it. Disregarding the nails digging into his hand and the punches bergading his arm he did not release Bell, he also didn’t say anything. He used the hand that was still wrapped around the older man’s arm to pull him gently into his arms, moving his, now slightly sore, other arm around Bell’s back and enclosing him in a gentle yet tight hug. 

“I’m never letting you go again,” he practically whispered into Bell’s ear, more for himself than anything else, as he held the older man tightly in his arms. 

Bell squirmed in his arms, trying to get free, but failing miserably. He finally gave up and cried into AJ’s shoulder, each sob feeling like a knife in AJ’s heart. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m so sorry,” Bell choked out, apologizing more to Kit than to anyone else. He wrapped his arms around AJ and continued to cry, soaking AJ’s scrubs in the process, but he didn’t even notice or care.

AJ didn’t seem to care either, the longer he spent with Bell in his arms the more relaxed and less tense he got, gently rubbing circles on Bell’s back. As much as it hurt him to see Bell like this he knew it was what Bell needed, to cry, to sob, to just have somebody there to hold him though it all. He didn’t say another word he already figured that anything that Bell said wasn’t meant for him, it was for Kit, and as much as he wanted to say something he respected Bell enough not to unless Bell said something to him. As of that moment he was only there to comfort Bell through this, the same way Jude, even in death, was comforting Conrad through Nic’s death, as well as his own. AJ figured that sometimes everybody needed someone they could hold onto, even men as grand as the great Randolph Bell.

Bell finally started to calm down, his gasps for air only sniffles now. His aggressive hold on AJ now gentle, and his eyes closed. He hated this, the fact that he was leaning on someone, right after he lost the one person who was his safety net. Now that his mind was right he was beginning to think of how wrong this felt. No one can replace Kit Voss, no one. 

Bell pushed himself away from AJ, gently instead of violently like he did a couple of minutes ago, not making eye contact with the surgeon and keeping his eyes on the floor. He didn’t speak. He didn’t tell AJ how wrong this felt. He didn’t tell him he felt like he was betraying Kit by being in his arms, he just sat there silently, back to Kits dead body.

Bell didn’t need to say anything to him, AJ wasn’t an idiot and he was the self proclaimed  _ Doctor of Love  _ after all. It made sense to him that Bell would push him away, anyone with eyes could see that him and Kit had had a connection since the day she first set foot in the hospital. In fact, next to Nic and Conrad, Bell and Kit were the most gossiped about couple in the hospital walls. Nonetheless, it didn’t make the push hurt him any less, in fact, even though it was gentler then the punches and the nails digging into his hand the push hurt him substantially more then either of those had.

AJs eyes flickered to the ground, still determined to keep his promise and help Bell no matter what. “We really should get out of here,” he said gently after a moment of silence, his eyes flickering back up to Bell, putting out a gentle hand that he didn’t figure Bell would take anyway.

Bell looked at AJ’s hand, then up at his face. He nodded, but didn’t take his hand. “Yeah,” he said quietly, a little too quiet. “Just let me do one thing really quickly,” he said, standing up and walking to a cabinet and pulling out a blanket. He then walked to Kit’s lifeless body, tears pulling at Bell's eyes again as he looked at her. He slowly sunk to his knees and took one last look at her pale face. “Thank you, for everything you did for me, I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough to save you,” Bell muttered, barely audible from where AJ was sitting. Bell stood up and took the blanket and draped it over her body, making sure to cover every part of her. After covering her up, Bell looked at AJ, not saying a word, a frown on his face.

AJ gently took his hand, then prepared for whatever slap or punch may have come along with it but he didn’t care. He had heard what Bell said, barely but he had, and he decided to say nothing on the subject at that moment. He knew it wasn’t meant for him and he knew it was none of business so he decided to say nothing about it but nonetheless the words stuck with him. 

“Wherever you want to go,” AJ said softly, smiling at him in a small attempt to see the soft smile on the older man’s face that he saw after a successful operation but he figured it would be a long time before he ever got to see that smile again. “Lead the way.” 

Bell looked at him, but didn’t tear his hand away, and he had no idea why. He just kept his hand in AJ’s, but he didn’t smile back, this was not a good time to smile, nor did he have the energy to. “I want to… I want… I don’t know what I want. I feel so lost right now,” Bell said, eyes dropping to the floor. “I can’t think straight right now.”

AJ gently squeezed his hand, “it’s alright.” When he spoke his voice was lower then before, quieter, as if with each passing second he was beginning to lose it more and more, right now he was holding on for Bell but later that night he already knew he was going to be having a fine date with a bottle of aged whiskey. “For right now let's just get out of here.” He gently guided Bell to the door, allowing himself just one look back at the covered, lifeless, body of the orthopedic surgeon before he closed the door behind the two of them. He lead Bell to the nearest empty room, he knew if they were going to talk, or do anything, they couldn’t do it in the room where Kit had just died. 

When they got into the room AJ sat down on the edge of one of the empty patient beds, still keeping a gentle hold on Bell’s hand. “You’re not lost, I’m right here,” AJ said after several seconds of contemplating, conversation had definitely never been his strong suit, especially not conversations like this but he was certainly trying his best.

Bell looked at AJ then quickly looked away. It seemed the more AJ talked about being there for him, the more confused he got. If he leaned on AJ, would that be doing Kit a disservice? Would he anger her? He had no idea about what to do, so he just remained silent, keeping his eyes forward and not on AJ out of fear of hinting that he was leaning on him and relying on him. Was he relying on him already and he didn’t even know it? Is AJ his new Kit? What was AJ to him? Before he could comprehend what was happening, he was grabbing AJ by the scrubs and pulling him into a kiss.

Bell saw AJs face light up with both surprise and embarrassment as Bell pulled him into the kiss. He was clearly caught off guard but wasted no time returning the kiss, it was damn near second nature to him. This was a moment he had dreamed about for years, he never imagined it would happen like this though. 

Before either of them had any chance to react to what was happening AJ heard the door to the room open. He immediately gently pushed Bell away from him and backed up till he hit the back wall before even looking up to see who what’s in the doorway.

Jessica stood in the doorway, a giddy smile plastered on her face. “Sorry,” she giggled softly. “I didn’t mean to  _ interrupt  _ anything.”

Bell didn’t look at her, he just kept his eyes on the floor, clearly frozen in surprise at his own actions. He had no control of that kiss, and grief probably drove the passion. Maybe that was the kiss he was saving for Kit this whole time and it unfortunately ended up on AJ’s lips.  _ That was a mistake, I didn’t mean to do that, maybe if I act like it never happened then AJ will forget about it.  _ Who was he kidding, there was no way this kiss was going to be wiped from either of their memories, and with Nurse Jessica knowing about their little interaction, all hope of forgetting was out the window.

“Did you come here for something, dawg?” AJ finally said after a few moments, his eyes focused on Bell’s feet, the usual smugness restored to his voice now that it wasn’t just him and Bell.

Jessica nodded as if she had suddenly remembered why she was there, “yes! Nolan insisted that I find the two of you to tell you that Jude is awake.”

AJs head suddenly snapped up to the doorway as if he had completely forgotten about everything that had happened with Bell just moments ago. “He’s what? That’s not- How?”

Bell also looked up, eyes widening at the comment. “But he’s dead. I saw him die,” Bell muttered. “He got shocked to death by the defibrillator.”  _ Why was Jude so lucky? Why was he the one to survive? Why did he get the miracle? _ Anger flared up in Bell, his selfish desires for wanting Jude’s lucky revival to be Kits instead, flooding his mind. He looked away from Jessica and back to the floor, biting his tongue and not saying another word.

Jessica only shrugged, “I guess he didn’t?” She said questionably. “Either way he is definitely alive now. He’s still badly injured but not complaining about anything besides needing more blankets.” She smiled, motioning for them to follow her. “Come see for yourself.” 

Bell walked towards the door, cutting AJ off by stepping in front of him, not really caring about his feelings at the moment. He was so angry that he barely remembered the kiss him and AJ had a couple of minutes ago. He would never wish death upon anyone, but to save Kit, he would let Jude die instantly with no regrets. He followed Jessica, his mind swirling in anger and chaos, while AJ walked behind him, staying silent.

\----------------------------------------

Jude drew a weak breath into his lungs, causing his body to rumble with a cough. He felt beyond awful, he had a splitting headache, his entire body ached and groaned like the floorboards of an old house. What really stood out was the pain he felt in his chest, so intense he could hardly breathe, his breaths short and pained. 

His room was pitch black, he knew he was at the hospital, at least he was supposed to be. Of course he knew nothing about the black out or the fact that everyone was certain that he was dead. 

He was freezing, he felt like he was laying in a snowbank in the middle of a winter storm, his teeth chattered and his entire body shook and shivered with the sharp, icy, air in the room. Each shiver sent waves of pain though his body, multiplying his already excruciating pain. 

He reached to pull the blankets further over himself, feeling, only then, a slight shift against his own body. There was someone lying with him. He ran his hand gently up their back, the second he reached the man's familiar soft, slightly curled, hair he immediately knew who it was.

“Conrad?” He said questionably. Even in all his pain the thought of what Conrad must have looked like cuddled against his chest in the pitch black room made a fragmented smile cross his face. The thought made him feel just a little warmer, knowing Conrad was right there next to him made his pain just a little less. Nonetheless, the only response he got to his question was a soft snore, which made the smile on his face grow just a little larger. 

He ran his hand gently though Conrad’s hair, surprised to feel a thin layer of frost layered though it. Of course, Jude knew nothing of Conrad’s mystery second power either, he figured it must have  _ really _ been cold in there. He pulled Conrad closer to his chest, gently making sure not to wake the shorter man, grunting and groaning when it made his body scream in pain. He pulled the blankets over the two of them, feeling Conrad shift in his sleep and tighten his grip slightly around his chest.

Jude then reached behind him, grunting again, and floundering for the call button in the dark for the call button. He eventually found it, almost instantly, Nolan, Devon, Jessica, and Irving barged in. In one hand, Nolan held a bright emergency light which lit up the whole room and burned Jude’s eyes, worsening his headache and causing him to bury his head into Conrad’s shoulder. 

He heard Irving scream, at least he had thought it was Irving, but when he looked up Irving had seemingly disappeared, Nolan and Devon were completely white, as if they had just seen a ghost. Devon ran out of the room and Nolan turned to Jessica, demanding that she go find Bell and AJ before running out before Jude even had a chance to ask for what he had called for to begin with, extra blankets. 

\----------------------------------------

It was what felt like forever before Jessica returned with Bell and AJ, both of them looked shocked too. Jude didn’t understand why everyone seemed so afraid of him, or maybe it was Conrad they were all afraid of? He wasn’t entirely sure but his head hurt far too badly to think about it in much detail. 

When Bell and AJ walked in, Jessica instantly walked out, going to gossip about what she had just seen happen between the two surgeons most likely. Jude laid on his side facing the door now, with Conrad’s head against his arms, both their arms wrapped around one another. Jude’s eyes were closed, an expression of pain painted across his face. He was clearly alive, he had never gotten those extra blankets so he was still shivering and shaking, clearly trying to conceal the whimpers of pain that welled up in his throat. 

“Oh my god, he really is alive,” Bell muttered, only audible to AJ who was standing right next to him. He didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed. “I have to go… This makes me fucking sick,” Bell sneered as he walked out of the room, leaving all the shocked doctors and surgeons behind

AJ’s eyes flickered from Jude to Conrad, back to Jude, he didn’t believe what he was seeing, yet it was right in front of him. Jude was dead yet he was right there. He didn’t say a word just staring until Bell spoke, when Bell started to leave AJ immediately turned and followed, along with all the other various doctors and nurses who had been there to see it with their own eyes. The last nurse took the emergency light with him, leaving Jude once again freezing in the dark with Conrad wrapped in his arms.

“Hello?” Jude called, a soft pained whimper leaving his mouth at the same time making his words sound weak and distorted. “Can I get some more blankets? Please?” 


	4. Shackles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jude is awake but he soon discovers things are not the same for anyone as they had been just days before, including for himself. He is no longer certain of what is real and what is in his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so big trigger warning here, it is completely my (Red) fault but this chapter contains e x t r e m e l y graphic depictions of violence so please be aware of that before reading. Without further ado, enjoy!
> 
> ~Red and Snuf

Jessica finally returned with stacks of extra blankets after what seems like another eternity of freezing. Jude sighed a slight sigh of relief when he saw her enter the room out of the corner of his eye. 

Jessica opened her mouth to say something but Jude immediately hushed her, pointing down to Conrad, not so soundly asleep in his arms, stirring against the taller man’s chest, Conrads grip tightening slightly, causing Jude to whimper softly. 

The hush made Jessica smile slightly, gently laying the extra blankets on top of the two of them and watching as Jude waited for her to leave before he snuggled up into the warmth of them.

The thought widened the smile on Jessica's face as she moved to the other side of the bed to get Jude some morphine, he hadn’t asked for any but she figured he wouldn’t object considering the pain he was clearly in. If he was trying to hide it and it was this apparent she couldn’t imagine how bad it actually was. 

Jude seemed like a tough, serious, guy on the surface, he tried too, but anyone who  _ really  _ knew him knew that that was him only when he wanted it to be. The real Jude Silva was a much simpler man then that, one who was much more of a vulnerable softie then he would ever let on. 

After administering the morphine, which as she had expected, Jude had no objection to, Jessica left, practically able to hear Jude settle comfortably into the blankets the second she turned her back on him. She closed the door behind her, leaving once again just Jude with Conrad asleep against his chest in the dark. 

Jude snuggled into the blankets the second he heard the door had closed, the morphine had already slightly helped to improve his range of motion and lessen his pain. He ever so gently and carefully moved the blankets up, tucking them in around Conrad, because the shorter man seemed to be just as cold as he was. After that he just laid back and savored the warmth of the blankets, the feeling of Conrad’s arms wrapped gently around him as the morphine eased his pain. 

\----------------------------------------

Jude laid there for what seemed like hours, warming up, feeling his pain fade to almost nothing, feeling Conrad’s cold breath breach the loosely woven fabric of his shirt and leave a small unwarmed spot on his chest. 

He ran his fingers though Conrad’s hair, which was now slightly damp from the melted frost, until he felt him move. This was different from the other movements, this not a fidget, Conrad was walking up.

Jude moved his hand from Conrad’s hair to his back, feeling the shorter man stretch slightly, it still being a bit too dark for him to actually see the stretch. 

Conrad suddenly stopped mid stretch, feeling Jude’s hand on his back. He immediately felt tears flood back into his eyes. This couldn’t be real. He was dreaming, he had to have been.

“Conrad?” Jude mumbled softly, a little confused as to his sudden freeze.

Conrad offered no response but moved swiftly, clinging back to Jude as if he would never let go again, squeezing him as tightly as he could and burying his head in Jude’s chest.

Even with the morphine still in his system that still hurt Jude a bit, causing him to grunt but also let out a small playful chuckle. “Hey now, be careful,” he chuckled softly, putting his arms around Conrad. 

“I-is this a dream?” Conrad’s voice nearly got muted by Jude’s chest with how tightly he was holding on to the taller man. 

“What? No, it’s—“ Jude stopped abruptly when he felt it. Conrad shuttered the slightest sob against his chest, it hardly made a sound but Jude could feel silent tears beginning to hit the front of his shirt. He knew then what he had been silently fearing this entire time, something was wrong, really wrong. 

He gently ran his hand down Conrad’s back, hushing him quietly. “It’s okay, it’s okay. What’s wrong?” His voice was soft and quiet, the complete opposite of usual, in fact, his whole demeanor had changed now.

Conrad didn’t seem to notice, only holding him tighter, gripping the corners of the taller man’s shirt as tightly as he could in his fists. “I-I don’t want to wake up,” his voice came out barely loud enough for Jude to hear it, repressed sobs lingering through it. 

“Conrad, you are awake though, I am too,” Jude said, confusion in his voice. He had no idea why Conrad was so clingy and afraid. 

Conrad shook his head, clenching Jude’s shirt tighter in his fists, feeling small layers of frost begin to form under and around his fists. “I-I’m not. This— it’s not real. It-it can’t be real.” The more he spoke the more his voice trailed off and the tighter he clung to Jude.

“Conrad, calm down. I have no idea why you’re freaking out like this. I just woke up to find you next to me, clinging tightly to me and not letting go,” Jude said, looking at Conrad, a lot of confusion on his face now.  _ Did I go into a coma or something? What the hell is going on? _

Conrad tightened his grip on Jude more, the frost from his fists traveling to the collar of Jude’s shirt. Jude’s remark seemed to only hurt him more. “You didn’t “just wake up” you  _ can’t  _ “just wake up”, Jude.” His voice shuttered slightly when Jude’s name came out of his mouth, his voice raising slightly. “Yo-you’re—“ his voice dropped off, he couldn’t even seem to say it, not even in what he thought was a dream. He tightened his grip even more against Jude, biting his lip to conceal a sob fighting it's up though his throat. “You’re dead.” He finally let out, falling completely silent against Jude’s chest, which even with all the blankets over the two of them was starting to grow cold once again.

Jude was silent at first, unable to form any words. He had no idea what to say anyway. He wasn’t dead, far from it actually. Air was still filling his lungs and he was talking to Conrad. “Conrad, I’m not dead. I don’t know why you would think I’m dead anyway.”

“Yes you are!” Conrad snapped back, his voice sounding more scared and upset than anything else. “Y-Yes you are,” he grumbled again, his voice low now, as if he was trying to convince himself that it was true. It wasn’t that he wanted Jude to be dead, it was more that if he convinced himself that Jude was alive only to once again wake up clung Jude’s dead body he didn't think he would ever recover from that and he was probably right. “Your injuries— t-the ones that I caused— caused you to c-code and the defibrillator malfunctioned or something and it— there’s no way you survived it. 

“Well I survived it, and I’m not coding.” Jude couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He coded? The defibrillator didn’t work? What the hell happened during his peaceful nap?

“Well you did! You coded! You died! And I did nothing!” Conrad’s demeanor suddenly changed. He yelled now, pushing away from Jude just enough to look him in the face. There was just enough light in the room for Conrad to see into the taller man’s eyes, and Jude into his, the light reflecting off of the tears that flowed silently down his face. 

This wasn’t like Conrad at all, then again neither was setting the hospital on fire, or running from the people he loved, or clinging to him like this, and those were only the things Jude knew about. Conrad was under more pressure than anybody knew, hurting more than anyone could understand, so he thought. Conrad was dangerously close to breaking beyond repair, and if there was anyone left that could prevent that from happening it would be Jude.

Jude had much less of an idea of what had happened then anyone else, and that was saying a lot considering how little everyone else knew. Even so, Jude was the only one that got to see, up close, just how much Conrad was really falling apart. Even if Jude knew his death wasn’t real, it  _ was  _ real to Conrad and it was dangerously close to becoming the straw that broke the camel's back. 

“Conrad, please calm down. Everything is okay now. Please stop blaming yourself for something that didn’t even happen. I am here now, so please don’t cry.” Jude was trying to calm the panicked doctor as best he could. Conrad was still living in the past right now, even though what happened in the past, from Conrad’s view, never happened in Jude’s head.

Conrad only stared at the taller man for a second.  _ “It sure does sound like Jude,” _ he thought to himself, seeming almost calm again for a second. It was as if Jude telling him it was okay made it okay.

Conrad reached behind him and gently grabbed Jude’s hand from its resting spot gently tracing circles on his back. Conrad’s hand was freezing against Jude’s bare skin, the blankets had been seeming to warm him up but now he seemed almost as cold as before. He held Jude’s hand gently in his for a second before sliding his icicle like fingers up Jude’s wrist and feeling for a pulse. A look crossed Conrad’s face just then, one Jude could hardly see because it was so dark in there but to say he looked relieved would be understatement. Jude could practically see the fear and upset drain from his face, replaced by nothing but a wide smile, and a soft chuckle, his tears replaced with those of joy. He latched himself around Jude once again and Jude could feel a bit of warmth being restored to his freezing body. 

“Y-you’re really okay.” Conrad mumbled with his head once again buried in Jude’s chest, his entire demeanor once again having changed entirely on a dime. 

“Yeah, yeah I’m okay, no need to be scared anymore. It’s alright,” Jude said, a smile coming onto his face. Jude wrapped his arms around Conrad, the smile on his face still not leaving as he enjoyed this small moment with Conrad.

“I wasn’t scared,” Conrad mumbled softly with a soft chuckle, reaching up and wiping the tears off of his face but never fully letting go of Jude. He never wanted to let go of Jude ever again, what he had said to Bell, he meant it. Dead or alive, Jude was all he had left. In that moment he silently took an oath with himself, to protect Jude no matter the cost, even if it cost him his own life. 

Conrad said he wasn’t scared, which Jude already knew wasn’t true, but then continued to cling to the taller man as if he would never let go, as if his life depended on it.

“Even if you were scared, there’s no reason to be, because I will never leave you again,” Jude said, holding Conrad tighter than he already was.

“Y-you promise?” Conrad asked, hugging Jude tighter as well, his voice stuttering slightly as he did so, looking up at Jude, still not letting him go, his chin rested on Jude’s chest.

Jude nodded, responding without any hesitation, “I promise.” He meant that and he knew that Conrad knew he did. After seeing Conrad so torn up over this, over something that never even happened, he couldn’t imagine how heart broken the poor man would be if something like this happened again. So Jude swore to himself that he would never let anything like this happen again, that he would stay by Conrad’s side no matter what happened. Even as the words Jude’s mouth he had no idea how much it actually meant to Conrad, Jude didn’t know the half of what he had been though in the last few days.

The room fell silent again, neither one of them letting go of each other. Jude laid there, clinging to the smaller man, as he felt Conrad’s chest rise and fall in a steady rhythm. Then Conrad began to snore softly, his grip on Jude lessening as he fell asleep.

Once Conrad fell asleep Jude couldn’t help but wonder exactly what was happening, what it all meant. Him supposedly having died filled in a few blanks but there was still a lot he didn’t know. He seriously doubted that Conrad was acting like this over a defibrillator malfunction. There was more to the story and Jude knew Conrad well enough to know that, in this state he was not going to get a word out of the shorter man. So he decided he would ask someone else.

There was still enough morphine in his system for him to make it out of the bed, ever so carefully removing Conrad’s arms from around him and standing up. As soon as he stood he felt like the weight of gravity was gluing him in place, he couldn’t lift his legs, not because it was too painful, but rather because his legs were too heavy to be lifted, but that’s not to say that it didn’t hurt. 

It was the most he could muster to quietly shuffle out of the room, careful not to trip or wake Conrad. He had a feeling if Conrad saw him up, knowing how much pain he was in, the shorter man would rip him a new one, or maybe not. Conrad had been acting so uncharacteristically lately that it was hard to tell what he would do but, nonetheless, Jude didn’t want to find out. 

When he finally made it across the room, being completely silent other than slight grunts and gasps that he couldn’t hold back, he opened the door and shuffled into the hall. It was almost completely empty he noticed as he looked both ways. It was much brighter in the hall than his room had been, the light caused his head to sting and him to stumble slightly, he cussed under his breath and braced himself on the door frame. 

The eerie emptiness of the hallway made the atmosphere around him seem like a nightmare,  _ maybe he had fallen asleep with Conrad? Maybe he really had died?  _ A few thoughts ran through his head, the eerie atmosphere sending a shiver down his spine, but all the thoughts were sniffed out when he saw Jessica walking towards the nurses station. 

She looked up and met his eyes, a puzzled look coming onto her face. She walked towards him with a small smile on her face. “Doctor Silva? What are you doing up and about?” She said, keeping her hands out at the ready to catch him if he were to fall, he  _ did _ just die a couple of hours ago, and she expected him to be weak because of that.

“Just looking for some answers, I suppose,” he said softly, smiling down at Jessica as she held her arms out to catch him. “I’m feeling fine now, just a little banged up is all. There’s no need to hold your arms out, I am not going to fall,” he said, even though he both looked and felt like he was going to collapse at any second. He instead tried to shift Jessica’s attention. 

“You wouldn’t happen to know what— what exactly happened when I coded would you? It’s just Conrad’s not really in a talking mood and I would really like to know.” His voice was gentle when he spoke, that was unusual for him, his eyes focused on the ground not on Jessica, that was unusual for him too. In a way that was because of the pain, but partly it was also because now that Conrad wasn’t around he was starting to worry about what had really happened, before Conrad had been distracting him from that.

“Yeah,” She said. “I wasn’t there, but I have heard a lot about it. People have said that you blacked out the whole wing of the hospital, and others have said that you shouldn’t even be alive because of the defibrillator malfunction, but I wasn’t there, you should try talking to Doctor Bell about it. He was there and could definitely tell you more than me.”

_ “Blacked out the entire wing?”  _ He thought to himself, suddenly started to get a worse and worse feeling about all of this.  _ “How is that even possible? How did I do that?”  _ He had a million questions in his head but if he wanted any answers he was going to have to ask Bell.

He responded to Jessica with nothing more than a mear, “thank you”, before turning and beginning to shuffle down the hallway, trying his best not to fall but being shaky still. The longer he stayed on his feet the more his body ached, the less the morphine worked and the more the agonizing pain returned to his body. The longer he was up and on his feet the more this whole thing seemed inexplicably like a nightmare, like it was all only in his head. 

Thankfully Bell wasn’t far down the hall, but from where Jude was standing, it was still a pretty far journey. As he walked closer he could tell that Bell was a mess. His eyes were red and bloodshot, and he wore multiple scratches along his arms, neck, and hands that weren’t even tended to. If you took Jude and Bell and put them next to each other, then told someone to find the one in the most pain, Bell would win by a long shot, even though Jude was definitely hurting more. 

The sight of Bell only added to Jude’s thought that this really might have all been in his head. Bell looked awful but no matter how awful he looked Jude was certain that he felt worse, and he just wanted to get back to bed but he couldn’t do that without the answers he needed. 

“Bell!” Jude called up the hall, stopping and bracing himself on the rail that lined the side of the wall. He was short of breath, sweating, he hadn’t walked that far but his body was so damn heavy he felt like he had just run a marathon. “I need to know what happened when—” he stopped talking for a second putting his hands on his knees and trying to draw in a few deep breaths, his body felt like it was getting heavier every second, and with the weight came more and more pain. “When I coded,” he finally finished. 

Bell looked up at the weak man, a darkness in his eyes that cut through Jude like a knife. He didn’t say a word as he rolled his eyes, then walked away, leaving Jude braced on the railing.

When Bell walked away Jude wasn’t sure if he should be shocked or scared, something about the way Bell looked at him gave him a bit of a nauseous feeling. A feeling that made him decide that it was a better idea to let Bell walk away then to push him any further on the subject. After watching Bell walk away he simply turned and went to return to his room, he was exhausted, in pain, and everything about being out and about was starting to make his skin crawl. 

“Jude?” A familiar voice said. Jude looked up to find Nolan, a confused look plastered on his face. “What the hell are you doing out here? You need to get back to your room and rest up, mister!” Nolan put a hand on Jude to try to steady the weak man at least a little bit.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Jude scoffed slightly, the pain he was in clearly starting to affect his mood. “And don’t talk to me like that.” He pushed Nolan’s hand off of him, almost immediately stumbling as a consequence, catching and bracing himself on the railing once again. “I was just going back to my room if you would excuse me.” 

“Let me help! I can get you there!” Nolan screamed, his voice booming through the halls, wracking Jude’s ears. Nolan didn’t know it, but his voice was so damn loud at that moment. Unnaturally loud.

Nolan’s voice made Jude’s already pounding headache splinter, causing pain to make his entire body shutter. Jude took one hand off the rail and grabbed his head with a loud growl of pain. “If you really want to help you can quiet down,” Jude’s voice was nothing more than a whisper next to Nolan’s, he stumbled yet again when a pulse in his head made the pain in his body spike drastically.

“I-I am being quiet!” Nolan screamed, still unaware of the fact that his voice was extremely loud.

A small grunt escaped Jude’s tightly sealed lips, moving his hands off of the railing where they were holding him upright and covering his ears. Nolan's voice made his head feel like it was going to explode, it exacerbated his already splitting headache, but it also did something physically to him, something he couldn’t put words to. It awakened something within him, something he didn’t even know he had. 

As soon as he removed his hands from the rail he became unsteady, he had shifted slightly to cover his ears so the closest thing he had to keep himself upright now was Nolan. The rest all seemed like slow motion to him. 

He felt his eyes widen, him beginning to fall backwards, he felt his hand move from his ear to reach for Nolan, his reaction was too slow to grab Nolan’s shoulder but he managed to get a fist full of his lab coat instead. Suddenly he felt something shift in his own body, not only in a metaphorical sense but also in a quite literal way. He felt suddenly like there was something stuck in his body that was trying to make its way out and surely enough there was. The second he closed his fist around Nolan’s lab coat he felt something pierce the skin of his upper forearm. He watched as a large chain, capped by some sort of railway spike, made its way, nearly painless, out of his forearm. He felt gasp fill his lungs but it didn’t make a sound. 

In his shock he was too slow to pull his arm away from Nolan, the railroad spike, followed by the chain going directly though his chest. The force of it was so strong it knocked the trauma surgeon back out of Jude’s grip, but even Nolan in the chains way didn’t seem to slow its momentum, it kept going. Through Nolan, through the ceiling, until it finally stopped, one end still in Jude’s forearm. It stopped just before Jude was going to hit the ground, leaving him practicing dangling inches from the floor, half of his body already on it. The position made his aching body scream in pain. 

The whole thing had only lasted a matter of seconds but it felt like decades to Jude. He looked up then, only to see Nolan suspended above him, the silhouette of his body lit up only by the eerie amount of light in the hallway, making the scene all that much more horrific. 

The chain had made a tunnel through Nolan’s chest, the force had thrown him back so much that his feet were no longer touching the ground, blood dripped from the corners of his mouth. It took only a glance to see it, Nolan was dead. 

Jude felt the air leave his lungs entirely, jerking his body to try and get free from the chain that suspended both him and Nolan in the air. With the fear and adrenaline fueling him now he hardly felt the burning pain that lit up his body as he frantically tried to jerk free of the chain. His feet skidded across the ground, with each movement he felt the chain move with him, Nolan with it, splattering blood onto both Jude and the floor. 

There were a million thoughts in his head at that moment he couldn’t believe this was happening, that he had just killed someone, that he had just killed Nolan, that there was a chain stuck in his arm. He thought maybe they could all be connected to what happened to Conrad, that maybe this was his _ thing _ . The thought only made him panic more, he had heard the stories, the gossip, the rumors. Conrad was an outcast after starting the fire and he hadn’t killed anybody, nobody around the hospital trusted him anymore,  _ liked _ him anymore. Jude had just killed a man,  _ killed Nolan, _ and it wasn’t like he was the most trusted or liked guy in the hospital to begin with. No one would ever accept him again. He hadn’t killed anyone since Afghanistan, he swore he never would again. If Conrad found out not even he would be able to accept what Jude had just done. If anyone found out, he would be alone. 

The further his thoughts progressed, the more force he put into trying to pry himself free and the looser the chain became. Eventually the end slid out of his forearm, leaving a large cut where the chain had come from but Jude hardly noticed. He scrambled to his feet as fast as he could, oddly enough the unbearable weight that he felt hand been glueing him to the floor now felt significantly lessened, enough that he could lift his feet off of the ground, enough that he could run like hell away from there, and that’s exactly what he did. 

He gave Nolan’s body, now hanging from the ceiling by the large chain, one last glance before he started sprinting away, not anywhere in particular, just away from there. As he did so, there was only a single thought in his mind. This  _ could not  _ be real. This  _ had  _ to be a dream.

Jude rounded corner after corner, trying to escape the horrible scene he caused, when he ran into Jessica. “Hello again, Ju-” She was cut short when she saw the blood on his clothing. “Oh my God, Jude are you alright? What happened?” Jessica said, a concerned look on her face. She just saw him a couple of minutes ago, what happened to him?

As soon as he saw her Jude stopped running he looked like a complete mess, not that he hadn’t before but whatever he looked like before this was much much worse. Jessica could practically see that his body was writhing in pain, blood dripped down his arm from the fresh cut caused by the chains, dripping all the way down to his finger tips before hitting the floor, tears left trails in the blood that was smeared across his face, his breathing was so fast she was surprised the hyperventilation alone hadn’t cause him to pass out. He didn’t seem to notice the blood or the tears at all, his eyes were wide, his body shaking, he was clearly in shock but Jessica had no idea what for, he had been fine just a few minutes ago.

He tried to say something, anything but it all came out mumbled and impossible to understand. It was a miracle he was even holding himself up at this point, his legs shaking beneath him, his back slouched. This time when he fell he made no attempt to catch himself, to grab Jessica or to grab anything, he just let himself fall, falling down to one knee. His knee hitting the ground with such force it cracked the tile beneath him, he braced himself from falling any further with his blood covered hand, smearing the now cracked floor with fresh blood. 

His eyes widened even more at the sight of the cracked tile beneath him, it only seemed to panic him more, to make his breathing faster. He was still trying to speak, to say something, an explanation, a lie, anything but still no  _ real _ words made their way out of his mouth. 

Jessica stared at the scene in shocked silence, unable to form any words of her own. Jude had just busted a hole in the ground, and he was covered in blood. “J-Jude?” She stuttered, still trying to find the words to her sentence. “L -lay down Jude, rest please before you injure yourself anymore,” She continued, holding her hands out to Jude to brace him.

Jude looked up at her hand, with all the adrenaline starting to wear off, the pain beginning to return full throttle and much worse than before, he wanted nothing more to take her hand but the fear froze him in place. He stared up at her hand but he couldn’t move, he couldn’t take it, he couldn’t move away, he was just stuck. The hand extended out to him only making him think of what could happen if he took it, he couldn’t kill Jessica too. He felt his body start to get lighter, his vision starting to close in, he started to get dizzy but he still couldn’t move. Finally managing to mumble a single word, dropping his head to the floor and getting more and more unsteady by the second. 

“No,” his voice was quiet, masked by his quick heavy breaths and hardly comprehensible to begin with. He wasn’t even sure if he was saying no to lying down or to taking her hand but either way he was certain that in this condition he wouldn’t be doing either.

Jessica stared in confusion as Jude said no, her hand still outstretched, but he wasn’t taking it. “At least let me help you back to your room then, please,” She said as calmly as she could, given the situation at hand.

“No,” Jude managed to mumble again, this time slightly more coherent than the last. Finally, he felt like he could move his body again, not touching Jessica, not daring to, he very slowly made his way to his feet. If he were in his right mind he never would have attempted it, it was clearly a bad idea but he did it anyway. He made it to his feet just in time to feel his dizziness and lightheadedness take him over. With the condition he was in it was a miracle that he had maintained consciousness for that long but the second he stood up he was out like a light. He fell back, thankfully, his body hitting the floor first, followed by his head, smacking the ground so quickly and with so much force that by time Jessica had anytime to react he was already on the floor. 

“Somebody get me a gurney here!” Jessica yelled, checking Jude’s pulse to make sure he was alright. It was a little high, but other than that it was good. She sighed in relief as a gurney rolled up next to Jude and her. They struggled to lift Jude onto the gurney, but managed as they heaved his body onto the bed. They then rolled him back to his room.

\----------------------------------------

It wasn’t too long after Jessica and the other doctors and nurses that had been helping her with Jude left that Conrad woke back up, stretching slightly, his arms were wrapped around Jude once again. It was as if Jude had never left, Jessica had even wiped the blood off his face, rewrapped the fresh cut and the old burns on his arms, and put him in a new change of clothes, so it was as if none of it had ever happened. Conrad didn’t even know that Jude was gone to begin with. 

A look of concern crossed Conrad’s face as he felt the taller man toss and turn in sleep, gently pushing Jude awake. “Hey, hey. It’s alright,” Conrad said softly when the panicked man awoke, feeling Conrad’s arms tighten around him. 

Jude’s eyes darted around the room, it was still dark in there but he was back in the room. He felt his face, no blood. He felt his clothes, no blood. He felt his arm, no tear in the bandages. He felt Conrad’s arms wrapped around him, just like they had been before. Maybe the whole thing really had just been a bad dream, maybe he really hadn’t killed anybody. Maybe he really was still  _ safe. _

Conrad watched as the panicked man’s eyes darted around, as his hands felt his face and clothes. “It’s alright, Jude,” he repeated, this time a bit concerned. “It was just a dream.” Conrad, of course, had no idea what Jude was freaking out about but he recognized the signs and figured it must have just been a nightmare of some sort, quickly dismissing the idea that it could have been something else.

“So it really was a dream?” Jude said, still looking around the room, breathing heavily.

Conrad nodded slightly. “You never left my side, just like you said you wouldn’t,” he said with a soft smile. He ran his fingers gently though Jude’s messy hair in an attempt to calm the taller man down. 

“Yeah, I never left,”Jude muttered, his breathing slowing, his eyes that were once darting around the room now closing shut as he let out a sigh of relief. The dream he just had felt so vivid, so real, the pain felt real, the horror of Nolan hanging by a chain felt real, yet it was just a stupid dream. He snuggled up to Conrad, grateful that he had him there to calm him down after that grueling nightmare.

Conrad hugged Jude tighter when the taller man snuggled up to him. He couldn’t help but smile softly, even after all the pain he had been through in the past few days, feeling Jude snuggled against him. For the first time since the day of the fire, Conrad’s body temperature finally felt normal, or at least relatively. Half of his body felt warmer than the other but he was neither scolding hot or freezing cold.

“You never left,” Conrad said softly, running his fingers again though Jude’s hair with a slight pause. “Would you like to talk about it?” That was a question Conrad would never ask anyone, not even Nic, but Jude was different, much different. They had spent years in Afghanistan together after all, that was probably why they were able to do any of this without it being awkward, lay in the same bed, snuggle with each other. Those were all things that started way back in Afghanistan, the two had become accustomed to comforting each other though the hard times and out there they both had their fair share. This wasn’t just something that happened, this was something the two of them were almost accustomed to, something they knew they could rely on to help them through bad times, something they need now more than ever. 

“No,” Jude said softly. “It’s not worth talking about right now, I barely remember it now,” he lied, wishing what he said was true, and he really was beginning to forget it already, but it was still burned in his mind. Nolan hanging, dead, with blood dripping down his chin and a huge chain in his chest. It made him shiver at the thought.

Conrad nodded slightly, he stayed quiet after that, he respected Jude enough not to pry but it was only moments later he felt blood dripping down his own chin. “Damn it,” he grumbled under his breath. 

A few of the stitches that had lined the large cut in his face had opened causing blood to flow down the side of his face. Up until then he had been skillfully hiding the cut from Jude, using the blanket or positioning himself where Jude couldn’t see it, the last thing Jude should have to worry about right now was him. The darkness of the room had also been working in his favor until then but now the sun was starting to creep up and through the window, but he couldn’t just let himself bleed everywhere either.

Hesitantly he pushed himself slightly away from Jude, just enough that Jude could see the large scar that crept up from under Conrad’s shirt collar and went all the way up his face, stopping abruptly under his left eye. The cut was messily stitched, poorly treated, and more likely than not, infected. Conrad had done the stitches himself so they naturally were going to be a little messy since he had done them on himself, not to mention that his hands had been shaking like hell and the needle had been practically frozen in his hand. He didn’t want to think about it, or what caused it, not now or ever if he had a choice. That was part of the reason he hadn’t wanted Jude to see it.

“I’m fine,” he said, wiping more blood away, defending himself before Jude even had a chance to say a word. He knew what came next all to well, the concerned lecture. Jude and Nic had that in common at least.

“How did that get there?!” Jude said, immediately shifting more so he could face Conrad and get a good look at the scar. “What happened to you while I was here? You should get that checked out! That’s probably infected! Why didn’t you get this checked out in the first place?!” Jude continued, worry written all over his face like a book.

“I said I’m fine!” Conrad snapped, seeming angry for only a split second before settling back into Jude arms, holding one of the extra blankets Jessica had brought carelessly over the cut. He wasn’t sure if the blanket was to stop him from bleeding everywhere or to prevent Jude from getting a closer look but right now it was, not so effectively, doing both. “It doesn’t matter, I treated it myself and it’s fine,” he spoke softer this time, less angry, more upset. They both knew it was a blunt lie but Conrad couldn’t bring himself to care, right now he was just looking for any way out of this conversation even though he knew with Jude he wouldn’t get it. Jude could feel Conrad’s skin starting to grow gradually colder against him. 

Jude sighed and shook his head. “I still say go get it looked at. It’s clearly infected, and it's better to just get it taken care of now than deal with it later.” Jude wasn’t letting it go like Conrad had hoped. “You always get hurt if I’m not around, you know? What happened to you anyway?”

Conrad’s blood ran cold when Jude asked the question. What  _ did _ happen? He remembered all too well, every detail etched in his brain, never to be forgotten. He remembered the shift he felt behind him, the force that knocked him to the ground, the weakness in his voice when he called for  _ her _ , but above all, he remembered the fear he felt when he looked up to see  _ him.  _

He stayed quiet for a minute, trying to think of an excuse, anything he could use to avoid telling the real story, the longer he stayed quiet the colder his body got, him starting to shiver against Jude’s chest. Jude was able to watch as the hazel in Conrad’s eyes drained, leaving a light blue that practically glowed in the half light that filled the room. All of this before Conrad was able to even find the right words to say, stuttering and muttering to himself softly but forming no real sentences. It was as if every bit of the Conrad Hawkins Jude knew had drained out with the hazel in his eyes. The man before him now was damn near unrecognizable. 

“Conrad?” Jude asked, watching the shorter man stutter and mutter over his words. He just watched as Conrad laid there in silence, patiently waiting for any kind of words to leave his mouth.

Conrad tightened his grip on the blood covered blanket that he held over the cut on his face with his left hand. The surface of the blanket was becoming covered with a thin layer of frost, frost traveling up his left arm as the event played over and over in his head.

“I-I—” Conrad finally started saying something that Jude could understand but stopped himself, he couldn’t tell Jude  _ that.  _ He couldn’t tell him the truth. Not even Jude would forgive him for what really happened, so he had convinced himself anyway. “H-he killed her. He k-killed N-Nic.” His voice was less than a whisper, the words left his mouth so fast that it was a miracle Jude could even understand it to begin with. 

Conrad expanded no further, made no more attempts to say anything at all, no mumbling or muttering, no nothing, only complete silence. He moved closer to Jude, once again wrapping his arms tightly around the taller man. He was both shivering and shaking against Jude’s chest, frost now covering most of the left side of his body and was continuing to move across it, nipping at Jude’s bare skin. 

Instantly Jude knew that that was it, the missing link to this whole thing that he had been searching for. The answer to why Conrad was so clingy, and obsessive over his death. It was because he was the only one left for Conrad. Since Nic fell victim to  _ him-  _ wait, who was  _ him  _ exactly?

“Wait, Conrad, who is…  _ him _ ?” Jude quietly said, hoping that Conrad would know who he was talking about without having to mention Nic’s death.

Conrad stayed quiet for a moment, caught in the endless loop of the events that happened that night replaying in his head. “That-” he fell silent after a moment, he wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t sure if he could even speak of the man, even the thought made his skin crawl, made an unexplainable feeling of fear rise up in him. With the thought, he clung to Jude tighter, he had already lost Nic because of that monster, he refused to lose Jude too. The thought made his body even colder, pressing against Jude’s body it was like a giant ice pack, it was alleviating most of his pain but in this case also chilling him to the bone, causing him to shiver in sync with Conrad.

“That—“ Conrad finally continued, pressed against Jude’s chest. “The guy f-from the parking lot, M—“ Conrad struggled to even say his name, ever since Jude had brought it up Conrad seemed absolutely terrified of something. There were a million things it could have been but Jude wasn’t sure what it actually was. 

“Martin,” Conrad practically forced the name through his teeth, grabbing a bunch of Jude’s shirt with his right hand, leaving the left on the blood soaked blanket that covered his cut, as if that would do anything to make him feel any better.

Jude stared at Conrad for a moment, recalling the man from the parking lot. There was something about that guy that made Jude uneasy, and he could understand why.

Not wanting to make Conrad any more uncomfortable, Jude didn’t say a word, wrapping his arms around the man to try to comfort him out of that horrible memory he had. He would wait for another time to talk to Conrad about this.

“Let's just lay here for a little bit more, okay? But once we get up, I’m making you get that cut checked out so help me God,” Jude scolded, trying to switch the subject, trying to lighten the mood.

Conrad only nodded a little in response to Jude, had he been more himself he probably would have cracked a smile or even giggled at Jude’s scold but he stayed completely silent. He shivered against the taller man's chest and the taller man against his. 

Conrad knew that Jude was curious, he could practically feel the curiosity radiating off of the taller man. Conrad was more than happy that Jude kept his questions to himself for right now, he wasn’t sure how many more of them he could take. He couldn’t even bring himself to say Martin’s name, much less talk about what happened.

Jude just held Conrad, rubbing his back gently. He pulled the covers up gently over himself and the shorter man, removing some of the blankets from himself and wrapping them around Conrad’s, shivering, frost covered, body. He used the remaining blankets to cover his own shivering body. With Conrad wrapped in the blankets Jude was able to pull the shorter, panicking, man closer to his chest, quietly hushing him.

Him having Conrad there with him was enough to make Jude forget momentarily about his nightmare of killing Nolan and for Conrad having Jude was enough to momentarily make him forget about the memory stuck on repeat in his head. 

The two of them laid in comfortable silence for what seemed like hours, neither of them even attempted to say a word, or made a single sound. Jude continued to rub circles in Conrad’s back as he felt the shorter man slowly warm up in his arms. 

After a long while Conrad finally spoke again, smiling and snuggling a tad closer to Jude before he did so. “The only person in this hospital I’m letting touch me is you, so if you want this cut checked out then you're going to have to do it yourself,” he chuckled softly.

The remark earned a slight smile from Jude, looking down at Conrad, the hand on tracing circles on his back pausing for a moment. “Deal,” Jude chuckled in response, pulling Conrad closer, neither one of them said another word, holding each other till they both eventually drifted off to sleep. 


End file.
